So here's something you haven't seen on this blog before. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Brad Blogspeed's very first guest post! Greg Enright is a friend, neighbour, and conversational sounding board to yours truly. He's also a professional writer and an all around smart fellow; and for a long time now I've been bugging him to guest on this blog. Yesterday, out of nowhere, he informed me that he had done just that.
There were no suggestions or conditions regarding subject matter, and despite what it looks like, I promise that I didn't ask him to include me in his piece! In any case, it's thrilling to have some writing on this space by somebody who actually knows the craft. I hope you enjoy Greg's thoughts as much as I did.
In the Internet Era, keep surfing...and conversing
by Greg Enright
The owner of this blog paid a visit to my house recently along with his wife and two little boys. As always when we all get together, it was just a flat-out good time. A bit of wine and beer, the hockey game on , kids (miraculously) playing peacefully together amidst a hurricane of toys in the basement... even a few rounds of Scategories. Lots of fun with good friends.
I in particular felt like I needed a break like this from the daily work grind, which had been grinding pretty damn hard of late. I’d been getting horrible nights’ sleep, fretting about the mountain of deadlines facing me at the office, and – silliest of all worries – about not being able to sleep and being unable to focus and function mentally when the sun came up. As soon as Brad and his brood came through the door, the worries faded into the cold storage of my mind.
What had been especially troubling for me at work was my sense that, in some areas I was responsible for, I really didn’t have as firm a grasp on some things as I would have liked. I’ll spare you the cringe-inducing details, but suffice it to say that during a meeting I simply did not know the answers to some technical questions being asked of me.
Maybe you’ve been there. I certainly hope you haven’t, though, because if I was ever in the middle of an ocean without a lifejacket, I’d probably feel something like I did at that moment. All I could do was say I’d get back to them with more information when we next met in a week. I left feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.
I resolved that over the weekend I would do some Googling of the topic I was mentally shortchanged on (some technical details of Internet video) so I could hopefully gain a clearer understanding of it. By the time Brad and Co. came over I hadn’t done anything of the sort, but I didn’t care. I needed at least 24 hours away from the matter. Brad and I quickly settled into our seats and our usual satisfying and wide-ranging (our wives usually just call it ‘geeky’) conversation.
’Round about the two- or three-beer mark we got to talking about how much more laborious it was to find stuff out before the Internet came along. Conversely, we mutually marvelled at how easy it was to do this today, now that the world had become so electronically enmeshed.
Brad put it simply: “If you want to learn how to do something, you can now – and so quickly too.”
The point really resonated with me. It wasn’t a revelation; I already knew the convenience associated with the Internet. But hearing it stated so simply and with Brad’s abundant enthusiasm, seemed to empower me. It made the concerns I had over my shortcomings of technical video knowledge fall like a house of cards.
We often seem to forget things that we know to be true through worry or distraction or whatever. We can remind ourselves of these things on our own by repeating them a thousand times in our heads. Often, though, they are best re-absorbed when stated by someone else.
That was the case for me. I ended up coming across a great and simple resource that helped me understand what I didn’t really know a few days before.
So here’s to sharing knowledge – both through the age-old form of conversation and the (relatively) new electronic way.
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