philosophy

I knew a girl in college who was paralyzed by fear. She’d see a fire truck drive by and start worrying that her dorm was on fire. She’d hear about a robbery and ask people to walk her to her car. She’d study for weeks for mid-terms and literally shake in fear as she was leaving them, thinking she’d missed some crucial question. She would use hand sanitizer every few minutes.

Abby was a very bright girl. She got a good job and ended up with a great life. But despite a healthy intellect and marketable skills, she was fighting an uphill battle of risk avoidance. She was afraid of something — anything — going wrong. It’s hard to blame her. A lot of things go wrong.

Money helps people.

Due to many factors – decreased violence, technological advancements, increased education, charitable aid, foreign investment – the amount of poverty in the developing world has decreased drastically over the past few decades. In 1990, over 36% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. By 2015, that figure was under 10%.

Regardless of how the folks got the money, having it is clearly positive.

I was sitting in this fellow’s office, and he was absolutely lording it over me, and I wasn’t even sure why.

I’d gotten to know the owner of a small media company in Little Rock, and he’d wanted me to meet his director of production. I went over to the studio, got introduced, and then sat down in the fellow’s office to get to know him.

Here I was, the naive 24-year-old freelancer, confused as heck.

I was just a camera guy. I made websites on the side. I was broke, had a lot of acne, weighed 145 pounds, and just wanted to hang out around some other media nerds. I was no threat.

Yet somehow that didn’t matter – I was fresh meat and this guy was out for the kill.

A few days ago I wrote a post over on the Discosloth blog about Shakeup 2.0, and what it’s going to mean to agencies.

I like to prophesy, and like all contemporary prophecies everyone else should take them with a fat grain of salt.

In this case, my musings were about the state of digital marketing agencies. I created a list of 5 things that would be the make/break factors of survival in an economic downturn. For an agency, the winning factors are:

I have spent a good deal of time in the past week speaking with artists about an upcoming book project. After finding a dozen or so artists and designers I liked, I sent inquiries along with specifications. The responses were things like:

• “I only sell rights for 1-2 years, and after that you must renew in order to keep using the image.”
• “You must know that I am only a digital artist, I do not design art for covers.”
• “You must read my terms, and then if you sign my terms agreement, we can move forward to discussing how many revisions and deadlines you will need.”

These are actually portions of responses that I received.

If these methods actually work, it is all well and good. But I suspect things aren’t working quite so well for these artists.

We’ve all heard about moving the goalposts. If something isn’t working out the way someone wants, it’s easy to change the goals.

I was in the aisle and met an old friend. “We’re trying to just work to live, not live to work,” she said. It’s a nice sentiment. But behind those words were years of strain, debt, and unemployment. You can’t fix that overnight. When a lack of money negatively affects health, family, and time, more income will undoubtedly improve your quality of life. It is a luxury to be able to choose your work. It is a luxury to be able to work, even. Many in the world are unable – mentally, physically, or economically. We should be careful to not waste our chance to work.