Go away…go far away

The terrorist attacks in Paris, on November 13, were a cruel reminder how so few can cause so much harm. The ripple effects, no doubt, were intended to send a message to the greater, global population – to keep people scared and off balance.

Just two weeks later, my husband and I would be flying overseas. To London. The trip had been planned since spring. There was no way we weren’t getting on the plane. Still, as the caution on global travel intensified, people asked – my mother, my chiropractor, my running buddy – whether we would cancel our trip.

We promised to be careful, but we were going to stick to our plans. And so we revisited the city where, decades earlier, we had honeymooned. Even back then there had been safety alerts in airports and public areas, both in London and in U.S. cities, about bomb threats and the need to report any unattended packages. Apparently “the good old days” weren’t as innocent and idyllic as we might like to remember them.

While we were away, more terrorist attacks did occur, not in London, but in America. First it was news of a gunman storming the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. Then coverage of the San Bernardino attack, which came just two days before we were to leave London. Two days after we arrived home, there was a knife attack deemed a "terrorist incident" in the London Underground, which we had used extensively.

I don’t feel we were lucky to be out of harm’s way during our travels. It's hard to know when you’re going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I just don’t want to live my life in fear or in reaction to possible negative outcomes.

So go away. Make your plans. Take whatever precautions necessary to be more comfortable while away from home. Check the State Department website for specific travel alerts and warnings, and sign up for its Smart Traveler Enrollment Program to make it easier for U.S. embassies and consulates to contact you and your loved ones in case of emergency.

Then pack your bag and go see the world. You’ll find it’s bigger on the outside. It's real HD – even better than it looks on the Web. And it's so much more fun when you experience it in person.

Why I (still) blog

“The world doesn't need another blogger.” That’s how I began my very first blog post, in 2008. Then I clarified my view: “At least it doesn't need another ‘the world according to me’ blog. Instead, I intend to share interesting and thought-provoking articles, sites, and ideas in this space.”

And that’s what I did every few weeks. Personally, I was testing this  format, trying to get a handle on what blogging entailed. As I became more familiar with the medium, I began to rethink the purpose of my posts.

There were any number of bloggers curating content. The trend in content marketing was beginning to grow, and eventually platforms like LinkedIn became flooded with people publishing posts to share the latest and greatest ideas.

I needed to take a different tack with my blog if I wanted to stand out from the crowded field of voices vying for attention. So I went back to basics. The world didn’t need another blogger, but my clients, and prospective clients, needed a way to assess my writing skills.

If someone was going to hire me to write a speech, or magazine articles, or an annual report, they could read samples of my work on my website, amyink.com. But if someone wanted to get a feel for my writing, if they wanted to get to know me as a writer, I would need to engage them with stories. My posts would give them bite-sized examples of different writing styles and subjects, while entertaining them on a range of topics. And, because I tend to publish every few weeks, the content would be current, so they could tell I was still alive and writing.

There is another important benefit to writing these posts: it helps me wipe the cobwebs from my brain and loosen up my writing skills. Like stretching before a run or prepping the soil before planting in the garden, these posts are my writing warmup.

As I transitioned from sharing the content of others to featuring my own writing, I changed my blog description to better describe the new direction: “Me? I write. You? Read and enjoy.”

I can’t prove this blog has actually gotten me any new clients, but I don’t think it has turned any off. At the very least, my posts – and LinkedIn and Twitter links to the posts – remind people that AMY INK is open and ready for business.

The feedback I’ve gotten tells me my friends enjoy reading the posts. And I enjoy writing them. If I get even one new client as a result, I consider that gravy. For now and into the near future, I will continue blogging unless and until technology delivers something even better for me to use.

Driving the social agenda

With the abundance of social media sites, it is understandable that each would adopt a sticky, if not aggressive, strategy to develop loyalty among users. The stream of emails and offers might work with some people, but it does nothing for my car.

Yes, my car has its own social media page. I created it in advance of a possible sale. The page features a large photograph of the car, with an accompanying paragraph that gives the relevant details.

The very next day after posting, and at regular intervals after, my car began receiving emails from the site. Each one starts, "Hi Volks." The first one was notification about the page being favorited by the team behind the social site.

At first, I laughed it off. Then I became intrigued. How far would the site go before it realized the subject of the page was a car?

A couple dozen people have already viewed the Volks page, according to site statistics. And now the car is being encouraged to create collections of similar pages, to compliment other pages, and to share its backstory.

Such a welcoming social strategy would be more, well, welcome if intended for and received by a human. But the fact that the process has been so automated as to not recognize an inanimate object is being featured is telling.

Unless, that is, the automated robot saw a kindred spirit in a mechanical driving machine. Then these emails make perfect sense. Although so far Volks has been too shy to reply.

Saving Amy

Suddenly I’m surrounded by the past. Old 8mm movies. Childhood pictures. Audio tapes of my days in college radio and my brother’s first band. My mother was a saver, and now that she is downsizing, she’s giving her children all their mementos.

The quality of these remnants isn’t always the best. You have to strain your eyes or your ears to discern detail, and the gist is really all that comes through.

The problem with much of the media is that it’s old technology. My husband had to scavenge two 8mm projectors to get one that works semi-reliably. Some of the pictures have adhered permanently to their album pages. And the audio tapes are either reel-to-reel, for which machines are a rarity, or cassettes, for which I still have machines, but the cassettes themselves have their own playback issues.

At one point, years ago, my father edited and transferred his trove of home movies from film to VHS tape. Then he must have thrown out the original film, because we haven’t been able to find it. As for the VHS, well, when I was able to find a player, the tape was in such bad shape that all I saw was snow.  One VHS tape had a promising title, about a holiday family dinner back before I was born, but that had been recorded over with some old television show. So much for preserving memories in media.

At first I bemoaned the loss of the sights and sounds of family and the way we were. Then, when this last batch of memorabilia surfaced, and I could hear my old newscasts, and my brother’s saxophone solos, I wasn’t so sure they were worth preserving. Things sounded so much better in my mind. I remember the circumstances around each recording, and the memories are kinder and clearer than these saved snippets.

I really don’t need to be reminded about the imperfections. I’d rather focus on the experiences I had and how they motivated me to continue discovering new things. Passions for radio and photography have faded, but other interests took their place. And then they faded as newer interests came along.

Over the years, I tried my hand at learning Hebrew and French. I entered 10k races and a half marathon. I rode bicycles. I hiked. I went to concerts and plays. I lived in the city and then the suburbs. I traveled overseas. I gardened. I took up yoga and mindful meditation.

There’s only so much time in the day, so it makes sense that interests would wax and wane. The lesson I’ve learned is to just keep learning, to find whatever that next thing may be.

And there’s only so much space in my house, so I really don’t want to save all the ephemera of my life. There’s much more room in my imagination to store memories of people and places and interests gone by – with lots of room left over for what’s ahead.