For your consideration
I am being deluged with emails marked "for your consideration". What can this mean? Why, it's Grammy time, and I am being asked to vote for this or that artist, this or that CD. Coinciding nicely with Halloweeen, the Grammy campaign is the ultimate trick-or-treat: the trick is to get your foot in the door (qualifying for nomination), the treat is the possibility that your very own offspring (your CD) might get The Nod (actual nomination) and then the big hug - The Win. Of course, if you didn't have a good enough product, and publicity, and enough sales, and enough just plain luck, you're back in the "trick" category.
I used to get little postcards in the mail, but now it's emails and facebook reminders, often multiple reminders from the same artist. Or his or her office staff. I hope it's the staff, because I can't imagine anyone I know and care about sending me the same email every day for a week so far. You know who you are, so just stop it.
I don't have a horse in this year's race, so I am going to ask you to consider something else. I'm be away on retreat up north at Holy Cross this weekend. Some of my friends are going in the other direction, south to DC, to join the March to Restore Sanity. But some of you are staying home. For you, it's the perfect time to check out my friend Paul Overton's new blog, Every Day is Awesome ("because cynicism is exhausting"). Paul is the creator of one of my other favorite blogs, Dudecraft (see sidebar about midway down this page on the right for the link); he's a very good writer and this new blog is... well, here is how he puts it:
My trip is about changing the way I see things, and people, and situations. I’m taking a look inside my head and rooting around a little bit, tinkering with my assumptions and expectations about life. It’s a game of small adjustments, but one that is changing the way that I move through the world. I don’t claim to understand everything and I don’t really want to, to tell the truth. For me, it’s not about gathering knowledge or wisdom or anything else anymore. That stuff just happens naturally along the way. At this point, I've decided that what I am doing isn’t nearly as important to me as how I feel while I'm doing it. So, in essence, everything I do has the potential to be awesome. Awesome acts as the container, everything else goes inside.
His most recent post, In My Solitude, is wonderful true. Go, you, and read.