I knew that I wanted to write a blog, but there seemed (at least to me) nothing in which I am an expert, and so I never began. In my own mind, the best I can summon is opinion and advice, but the world seems awash with both, and I don’t want to be someone who simply adds yet more noise to what already seems a social media cacophony; especially when so many think that communicating is about speaking, when in truth it is about helping others to understand. As one of my brother’s school teachers used to say, “we were made with two ears and one mouth, and they should be used in at least that ratio.”
I’ve been bouncing these, and more excuses, back and forth against a brick wall of inertia for some time, but when you spend so much time bouncing those excuses, the wall – little by little – weakens. When it finally caves in, it seems to do so easily, and suddenly you find momentum without effort. When your reason for not doing something does a 180 degree turn, you suddenly find reasons for lying around everywhere, and any one of several events could have been the catalyst for the wall’s collapse; two come readily to mind.
Kerry Washington gave a heartfelt speech at the 2015 GLAAD Media Awards, and in her words I heard a plea for everyone to have a voice, and to use their voice, no matter how important they feel their voice might be. Everyone is unique, diversity is important, everyone is important.
We saw 150 people die in a plane crash, perhaps because one person felt they were not able to raise their voice without being judged, or disadvantaged. That thought is still speculation as I write this but as I said, when we stop looking for reasons not to do something, and start looking for calls to action, we find them in everything, even harrowing tragedies.
But this is just a humble blog, from someone who is beginning to see the importance of stories, the importance of having a voice. The voice will begin as a whisper, but that’s ok. And maybe that social media cacophony just sounds like pandemonium from the outside. Maybe once I get in, I’ll find voices singing in unison with me. Maybe it’s not a cacophony but rather a large number of diverse choirs.
I have no idea where I’m going with the subject matter or the theme for this. It might end up being a blog about cutting edge research into Thermohaline Circulation or it might just be about knitted bunny rabbit hand warmers. It could dispense sage advice about project management in professional services organizations, or it might just be a collection of pictures about cats and food. The important thing is to have turned inertia into momentum, and now that I’ve begun to do that, I can turn my thoughts to picking a direction for that momentum.
