The Week That Was In My Little Corner Of The World Volume 2

I am always astonished at how the summer months just slide by in a bit of a haze. July, August, September pffft, gonzo.
Having said that I am one of these people who is none too fond of summer, especially those of the hot humid variety which we here in the Big Smoke were exposed (or overexposed) to this past summer.

I’m All For Fall

Now that the cooler weather has descended upon us I can get back into more of a normal work/play cycle. I don’t know about you, but hot humid weather really saps my energy and I do believe adversely affects my attitude to, well just about everything.

The Genesis Of Migration

This fall and winter will likely be the last in our current house in the east end of Toronto. My wife will be retiring at the end of the school year and since I don’t actually have to be anywhere other than in front of a computer to do my job, we will be moving to a smaller community.
St Catherines, which is actuality only 20 miles due south of where I am sitting. But about an hour and a bit because of Lake Ontario, is our destination of choice. It’s also only 20 to 25 minutes from both my sister and brother who are, in addition to being siblings, very good friends.
So this winter will be spent unloading a lot of accumulated crap, and several trips down to cruise around to see where we would like to focus our house search.

The Highlights Of The Week

The Presidential Debate: This is actually a lowlight but we made a valiant attempt to sit through the Presidential debate on Monday night but failed miserably.
File this under ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, but I am so sick of looking at the smug, entitled, tanning bed orange mug of Donald J Trump, that it’s now beginning to produce a physical reaction in my stomach.
I told my wife, and she agreed, that we would watch the debate (an I’m being very generous calling it that), until Trump reverted to his one-trick pony posture, then wait a few minutes to see if he recovered then go back to the baseball game which we were watching before this all happened.
It actually took about 15 minutes, which we thought was pretty incredible, until he started to rant about how fucked up everything in America has become, how the American dream is dead….blah…blah…blah. How we need to secure our borders from the murderers and rapists flooding in from Mexico and the maple syrup salesmen flooding down from Canada.
So twenty minutes in and we were gone. What a relief. I actually feel sorry for Hillary Clinton, who had this totally bemused look on her face all the time she was listening to Trump rave on. But that’s a whole other thing.
2. My Associate John McLachlan: John is a very good art director and creative thinker and we get along famously. We’re currently working with a company that has made an incredible site mapping tool, that’s really useful for all kinds of industries, but right now we’re focusing on fire departments.
John also wants to add a third person to the team who would deal with account management and sales, so I’ve been thinking hard about that. The idea is to create a virtual agency that can handle both on and offline communications and make sure the right synergies exist to really solidify a company’s brand.
A lot of people talk about doing that, but honestly don’t have the skills or experience levels to make that happen consistently. But we do.
3. My Hand-Me-Down Iphone. My wife went over to the bell store last night and renewed her

cell phone contract. In the process she ended up with a new Iphone 6. Which means I ended up with her old Iphone 5.
I just have to go over and sign up for a talk and text plan, since I don’t want any data because I will really not get any value out of that.
I was playing with my new phone last night and texted my daughter a couple of times. Wow. It’s a far cry from trying to text something on my flip phone.
3. A New Story From Ms Shelley Brown
Shelley is a very sweet, very smart girl from Chicago who I got to know over in The Lumpy Kingdom. She has written some very nice stories, but has only really posted them on Facebook, because her schedule is so whacky that she doesn’t have time to do it here, even though she is a bee.
So here’s Shelley’s latest, it’s called Why

WHY?
Ms Shelley Brown

Why? I’ll tell you why. So let me start by telling you I moved to Lincoln Park back in February. Why? I’ll tell you why. I was living in a place that felt very much like a dorm filled with people who could not say hello on the elevator and it felt painful. I didn’t take it personally. It just felt painful.

Now I’m not making a blanket statement here. I said hello to everyone and a minority of people let out more than a grunt if they didn’t have their headphones on or weren’t busy texting. Somehow in my weird mind, I didn’t realize this was a generational shift precipitated by technology and thereforeI thought moving to a “neighborhoody” area would be filled with “Hello-Sayers”, people on porches who would know my name and would invite me over for dinner or a Gin Ricky. Any Andy Griffith Show (For you non Hello Sayers, Andy Samuel Griffith (June 1, 1926 – July 3, 2012) was an American actor, television producer, Southern gospel singer, and writer who starred in the, are ready for it? “The Andy Griffith Show” which helps my dear friend Christa Engel fall asleep) My lease ended in January and I paid a premium for an extra month to live in my cookie cutter hovel so I could find a cool dwelling in Andersonville but that didn’t happen. Why? I’ll tell you why because it was winter in Chicago and basically no one but me was moving.
I ended up moving to the Belden Stratford. Fancy sounding, huh? It’s a historic landmark and former hotel that played host to celebrities and dignitaries back in the day. I know you are thinking, “Wow, how cool Weird Girl” and I be like no. Why? I’ll tell you why, while I am across the street from beautiful Lincoln Park, the train is too far away, none of my friends live in LP and the nearest grocery store is a “Mom and Pop” store that charges $11 for a gluten free bread that costs $5 at Whole Foods. Get my point?
So I know I’m blessed. Why? I’ll tell you why. I have my health, my friends, a roof over my head, my dog, a good job… So why is my life pathetic and I have had writer’s block? I’ll tell you why. Every day is the same. I get up around 4:30 AM, drink tea (yes, quit coffee again), walk River who refuses to poop on the first walk, I ride my bike to take a spin class, come home, walk River who will poop on the 2nd walk, shower, work until 6 or 6:30, go down the street to a diner to get dinner because groceries are just as expensive, watch some TV and go to bed. No neighbors on porches and no Gin Ricky’s. Now don’t get me wrong,
I’m not totally blaming geography but the movers are coming in a couple of hours. Why? I’ll tell you why. I’ll be closer to the train, closer to friends, closer to a few non $11 loaf of bread groceries and I’m going to make some changes so I can have a life, walk River only once in the morning, end my work day earlier and find some Weird Girl adventures to engage and enthral all of you with my Weird Life
Love Shelley Brown

4. Our First Beezers Post. The Beezers is the hive on beBee that I share with Phil Friedman, Don Kerr and Kevin Pashuk. These guys are flat out the best writers I know here and since we have know each other have become good online friends.
This post kind of speaks for itself. We’re pulling great numbers and engagement and are strongly encouraged to think up another topic or three to tackle together. This is a hell of a lot of fun.
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/does-social-media-have-a-future-or-is-it-just-a-stepping-stone-to-the-next-big-thing
5. BeBee Promotion
As a beBee ambassador, I have been regularly posting a number or articles and asking the people who read my stuff, to forward these posts on through to Twitter and LinkedIn especially.
LinkedIn is now completely unfriendly to independent writers. As part of their post acquisition

activity, they have turned their Pulse platform into a dump for articles from major newspapers and on line publications. It’s probably just a matter of time before that become a revenue stream for Microsoft.
So much for that experiment. This is going to leave a lot of writers over there high and dry and unable to really grow their followings. So logic dictates that a great many of them will be open tot he idea of posting here on beBee as well. And once they’re here and see the kind of results they achieve…
Helping beBee by reposting some of these articles really does help grow the user base here and the logic is crystal clear…the more new beBee users, the better it is for all beBee users.
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/a-sincere-message-to-non-influencer-writers-on-linkedin
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/the-upsides-of-being-excellent-to-each-other-on-bebee-and-everywhere-else
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/what-i-tell-people-about-bebee
So that was my week. Not all of it because, you don’t really want to know what I had for breakfast and all that other crap.
Have a great weekend, everybody. It’s my wife’s birthday, so that means dinner with the kids and a trip to Alora for a fall craft show on Sunday weather permitting.

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https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/
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