IT is All in the Title?

A title. The title is all important. I have one line to capture your attention and make you want to read on. Apparently.

There are people who demand attention, their voices project from some personal amphitheatre constructed by scaffolders of fate (this creates a picture of large ears for me) and carried with them.  I was one of those people. (No, my ears are proportionately normal). My voice, my dulcet monotones were a little, more bass than my classmates and the teachers voice so regularly rang my name as half the class passed whispering levels and entered chatter. I think it simply became a habit, an easy call (of the teachers not my own). It had to be me jabbering away, even if I was practically silent.
As usual, habit or part of my persona, I digress.

I am inspired to write in response to Cristian Mihai‘s blog post today, well, when I started writing it was ‘today’. Which actual day that was mingles with all the others that I have lost track of. For the length of that sentence I’ve been planning on the next, ‘today is another week, depending on how your week starts.’ I confess, I believed that today was Monday. It is Saturday. Have I gained two days or lost five?

Christian Mihai’s post:
Are writers crazy? 
If I could truly call myself a writer (one day please…) The end of my last paragraph would lend some argument to the question.
He quickly sets out with a very good definition of crazy, though he uses insanity as a synonym:

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.

I feel somewhat certain that what I will write next in reaction to this quote occurred to him to:

That sounds like the definition of a job. General employment. Going to work and making the effort. I bought a t-shirt for a friend of mine fond of a phrase,

'Same t-shirt different day'.

'Same t-shirt different day'.

See, reading it twice, for me, emphasises the feeling. It is all in the title. Yes a title catches our attention, draws our interest, the opening paragraph seems to be the actual catch point. A statement that ensnares where the reader takes the hook. I’m not describing you as a fish! How to lose you immediately lesson 1? It’s the content that counts.  I am naturally uncertain of the quality of this content. I worry about my grammar, I edit, re-edit. Go away, come back, re-read. I post it and read again. I find errors. Apparently that is why editors are used by actual writers 😉  As I worry about content quality it is easy to feel that I am rambling. Short staccato sentences like an automatic weapon, each firing home a decisive point. Points that may immediately argue the other side of the coin to the degree that you remain uncertain of the authors point of view and become increasingly uncertain of your own? This approach seems all the rage in an age of critical reflection?
There is a TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/shane_koyczan_to_this_day_for_the_bullied_and_beautiful.html
In the talk Shane Koyczan describes the career advice meeting that he (we) receive(d) at school.

(Without tangency, for my part and anybody that I have ever been told of, there is only one such superfluous meeting that serves but one purpose for most of us: throwing us into a state of worry just as we prepare for those all important exams? No we will not go off on that tangent).

‘What do you want to be?’ he was asked.  Almost in the same breath as he stated his desires he was being told that he cannot be.
A long time ago I took the army entrance exam. Before taking it, in the Army Careers office (they no longer exist) there I was, being told that I should be this or that but basically something basic and menial. Army training is like that throughout, knock the individual out of the individual and regrow a soldier that acts as all others. The psychological angle to that exam approach? Tell me that I cannot in order that I prove my ability against the odds.  In questioning what we the reader thinks, in challenging our very ability our interest and involvement level is increased, theoretically.

A similar situation exists in the attraction battle between us. If the guy or girl shows that they like you you make less effort? Yes, I know that this is a very loose generalisation. Generalisation, in general are such because of there general truisms.
That which we are offered we may reject, refuse, turn down that offer. That which we are given a little sight of and then held at a distance from we want much more.

So somewhere in that subject of approach that I have skimmed over lie the reasons for styles that emerge and keep us reading. Please do not misconstrue my apparent attack, I do not doubt the value of such.  Not at all, yet…
you felt that coming right?

Where are we today in this time of technological advancement at an unprecedented rate? We love (or hate) proofs, measurements, purpose, practicality, and even a practical purpose.
It’s all well and good, indisputable even that achieving something is important. That actually ‘doing’ makes a vital difference to our productivity. ‘Yet… ‘ something sits uneasily.

What happened to an artistic … ok somewhat Bohemian consideration of things at a slower pace, with more value in time for the sake of time?

When? When Neil Armstrong said, “..one giant step for mankind.” did it all become such a race?

The direction of this post was altered somewhat during a conversation I was having with a fellow wordpress blogger last night.

They asked me why my posts are so complicated. I asked, are they?
That in itself is worrying. Why would you read something that loses you or itself along the way? Like the manner of speaking and writing I described earlier, in this ever faster moving marketplace that life has become we are focussed (gotta be focussed, please sense irony here) on the end, the result, the meaning and it’s worth. In our rush to our destination are we forgetting the journey?

The title, the capturing of an audience; sure the relating to others and being related to, they are the all important. I wish to make a contribution. Don’t we all?
It is true that most of our worlds are self-centred and ego, id focussed.– you may well enjoy this article. (by id I mean identity, self-identity and all that this incorporates, not the id as Freud defines it). Some measure (there we go again) success by what they gain personally. Some by what they provide.My side of the conversation last night claimed that it’s simple enough. Interactions and considerations are complex if we try to consider all angles, facets etc. We live in a world which requires, no LOVES decision makers. Why? Because the majority of the world has been led to believe that it does not want to and cannot make that decision? So let somebody else make those decisions. We all moan about the regulations and decisions made for us. But (but being a negative word) few of us want to actually play a part in them.

The ancient Greeks, one of our worlds oldest and most successful civilisations, required each member of society to play an active role in their government, council decision-making. OK this does not account for the slavery and those not counted. Every subject is complex right?  Swiss nationals today are invited to each vote on a very high number of governmental municipal decisions. It can be fairly argued that theirs may be the most democratic nation? Yet in the main we are led to believe that we want an easy life where other people make our decisions for us. Meanwhile we lose the skill of true discourse, consideration and involvement. And those who believe that they can step forward and the presidential puppets of our world are born?  OK the last sentence becomes a little political and even conspiracy theory based.

The point that I was making and I was understood was that life, love, meaning, perception, good, bad, right, wrong: all of everything that is or can be IS complex. We try to simplify it, for understanding? To take control of it. Why?
What would happen if we slowed down and considered. For the sake of consideration?

As important as the end result is the way in which you do something.