What business are you in?

Wanna buy some content, Mr?

Sometimes I feel like a frustrated character from a John Irving novel. No, not one of the bears from his early works (even though my children might think I'm a bit bear-like when I'm pissed off). No, not the tortured T.S. Garp.

No, sometimes I feel like the migrant farm worker Arthur Rose from "The Cider House Rules". In his efforts, as crew foreman, to keep his people focused on picking apples, he sometimes yells, "What business do you think you're in?" The correct answer is, of course, "the apple business."

When people get all prissy about being involved in digital media, especially social media, I just want to ask, "What business are you in?" And many people seem to have no idea that the right answer is "the digital media business".

Yes, I get it. Spending time on Facebook can make you feel "unclean." And, indeed, overexposure to LinkedIn, Instragram, and the blogosphere (or whatever the monkey on your back/guilty pleasure might be) can be harmful to your health. Well... I don't mean to break this to you too rudely, but... it's 2015. And being involved in certain activities makes digital media a necessity.

Take for example -- if you are an employee -- your workplace. The multinational where I work launched an internal, cross-border social network about three years ago. It almost tanked because of cultural resistance. I saw possibilities in launching a blog on business writing, a subject I run training sessions in. I'd asked people if they'd seen my blog. I got a shocking number of responses to the effect that it wasn't worth their time to play around on a company social network. What is it good for?

Hello? What business are you in? We're talking about corporate lawyers and management consultants and tax advisers. If this isn't the information business, what is? I was flabbergasted that my dear colleagues didn't see the value in getting to know people and finding out what they are doing. They didn't "get" the power of making connections all over the globe that will extend their reach and their potential to draw on resources when they need them. And this is just scratching the surface of what a social network can mean to this crowd. What business are these people in? They're in the digital media business.

I have friends who arrange martial arts workshops and promote them on Facebook with posters and videos. What business are they in? They're in the digital media business. They use social networks for business.

I have friends who write books and publish them as ebooks. This is an introverted crowd that can be especially wary of the contagion of social media. What business are they in? They're in the digital media business. They should realize that if they want to sell books, they're not going to be promoted big-time by a publisher unless they're the next Stephen King. Until they get their first best seller (or once they realize they write niche books for a crowd that has to be reached by clever means), they should be blogging to cultivate an audience for the kind of material they produce, and interacting on social media with groups of people who are interested in the subject they write about.

I can write about this so authoritatively because I am "a man of certain years" who is a bit wary of the digital onslaught. I have thought of getting off of Facebook several times. But I've realized that because I promote my own workshops and sometimes sell my writing... well... I'm in the digital media business. And once you realize that, you shouldn't dabble in it, you should jump in with both feet and make the most of it.

Banzai!      

Warriors rise to challenges

Theo Hemmingway working on next posting

Reading the announcement gave me a frisson of fear. So I knew it was a good idea. Scary, but good. Good precisely because it was scary (Jeez! I'm starting to sound like a bad Hemmingway parody.)

The challenge is to write a blog posting (not just link something or publish a picture of your lunch, but write something) once a day for a week. The challenge is being organized by Winnie Kao, who works for Seth Godin. Seth is all about "shipping", meaning sending the product of your efforts to someone else; delivering, publishing.

As some readers of this blog might know, in the distant past I once had a weekly newspaper column, for two years (and later for a few months at another newspaper). If you've never done it before, you have no idea how much pressure it is (mostly pressure you put on yourself) to produce clever, publishable (what your editor considers publishable) material every week by deadline.

I've never done daily.

But I'll tell you why I want to try it. I read blogs on a feed reader. That means I download blogs onto my phone in the morning, and I read them during the day when I get the time (typically while commuting on public transport, or while eating lunch). Every morning, without fail, there is a posting from Seth Godin. Every day. That means I think about him, and about the things he's thinking, every day. That's an amazing presence. That's powerful.

It also means that he's gotten very good at short posts. That man can say in three short paragraphs what most people need ten for.

So, here it is that I very publicly commit myself. Starting tomorrow (Monday, 19 January) I will post each day for one week.

Banzai!

The dream of the two dojo

When I woke up that morning and realized I'd had the same dream for the third time, I knew this was a deeper life issue.

The dream, entitled "The Two Dojo*" in my dream journal, starts out at a very traditional Japanese aikido school. The decor is spartan, and the only colors are black and white (like the white uniforms and black hakamas of the students). The teacher is painfully strict, and everyone is deadly serious. They practice with stony sober expressions on their faces. Later in the dream I find another school, where the environment is as colorful as a rainbow, and everyone is laughing and having a great time while they train. I instantly feel this is where I'd rather train.

Initially, this recurring dream affected where I chose to train and how I taught aikido classes at my own school. But, as with all "big dreams", there were multiple levels of meaning within it.

Now, almost a quarter of a century later, I realize this dream heralded the path I would follow later in my life once I had conceived of the unique self-development mode I've dubbed Dream Warrior Training. The essential principle behind DWT is that martial training**, dreamwork, and the discipline of journaling (writing for the purpose of exploring the mind), have potent powers for transforming the individual who practices them in combination. My mission is to lead workshops that enable people to benefit from the insights this combined activity can deliver. It is nearly impossible to spend time doing these three disciplines together -- even if only for a day or two -- without coming to some new, life-enhancing realizations.

This is the colorful dojo where everyone laughs and trains joyfully, even though the subject matter is of vital importance.

Whether or not you wish to, some day, participate in this mode of training, the purpose of this blog is to share with you my own insights gained from a life informed by the daily pursuit of these three treasures. If you are interested in dreams, in the wisdom that can be found within our bodies, or in the power to be discovered in using the written word (or any combination of the three), the postings to come in this blog will be just the sort of thing you're looking for.

And though I will engage in a certain amount of curating -- that is: linking and commenting on things I find on the internet -- my well-established blogging habit consists of telling stories relating to my own experience. I know that my own taste in blogs runs to the writers who generate original material, not those who just echo the rest of the cyber noise. I suspect you, astute reader, have similar tastes. If you have a feed reader, perhaps you should subscribe now, to follow this story from the beginning.

Welcome to The Dream Warrior, where insights are inevitable, and laughing is encouraged.  

*A dojo is a place where a spiritual discipline (in Japanese "do", like the Chinese "dao") is practiced.

**specifically the motions and breathing practices that awaken consciousness and enhance one's energies, which I call "martial yoga"