Keys to Nothing

I signed up for an editing workshop. We are to bring an excerpt for something we're working on. We are to state two techniques that we're good at. We are to submit questions for the person conducting the workshop.

I can't figure out where to upload that stuff either. I hate my homework being late still.

I'm contemplating the word irrelevant, in a social media realm of OK, boomer.

And contemplating the word control. I know in my brainpan somewhere that control is an illusion, that we control nothing, including what our brain decides to save into long term memory. My friend and I talk about this a lot. If we have no control, even of how our brain functions, then who or what does?

Irrelevant. We also discuss the difference between mind and brain. There's an analogy we came up with that both of us wrote down, but I don't remember it, and I'm not sure we are equipped to handle unanswerable questions. Examine how much life is left to you. Contemplate infinity. See how that works for you.

But the workshop signup started a chain of events that feels exciting.

I've been writing the story I will learn about editing for 15 years. It's memoir, so it's personal. Friends who have read the blog posts over the years love the stories about the wild ride caregiving is. There are about 60 million people in the USA who are caregiving right now, so maybe there's an interested audience, too.

So there's that to finish. Complete. Settle.

I bought a couch. One I picked out for myself. It's too much in the packed living room. What needs to go? My mother's secretary, which is a lovely piece of really large furniture. Her buffet that she bought for her trousseau in 1948? My great- and grandmother's desk that I had brought here when we sold her house? Most furnniture in the house is not mine, not pieces I chose. I don't like antiques. I keep them because? I keep them because of stories. I know the stories of all this furniture. Story provenance.

I told the friend who agreed to take the buffet that there wasn't anything in it. Then I dumped out the drawers. What's in it are all the things I did not want to throw away or hand out over the years.

It's a week later and most of the stuff is on the floor. Because in order to put it in one of the 2 remaining desks, I have to empty those, too.

Each day I choose something to put in the garbage bag sitting next to the pile on the floor. My father kept keys to things he no longer owned, including car keys. There are stories to those keys. But the stories are not mine. I threw them all out, inspired by Stu in The Stand (which I just reread) who–broke legged and dying in the wilderness–goes through his pockets and finds a keyring with keys that will open nothing. He throws them into the gulch. I did likewise.

Editing. The work and the psyche. Can't fill a vessel that's already full. This furniture offload is the equivalent of emptying the Junk Drawer of Life. Time to broom survival techniques that no longer serve, and have only been accumulating more stuff I can't use but don't want to look at too closely.

Stories are wonderful. Stories are how humans explain the universe to themselves. Edited stories are even more wonderful.

Time for my stories.

Media Ad Buys: What Audience Has the Money?

"Put Millennials First," a PR piece, is NDN's push to get young people to engage politically. That's a good thing. Doing this by hammering supposedly anti-young media outlets about broadcast ad buys is not. Hais and Winograd lead with the statistic that Millennials have 11% more buying power than Boomers did in the 1960s and 70s. So what? my millennial familials would ask. The writers cite research/consulting firms; one whose initiative brought Millennials to the attention of broadcast media, estimates people born between 1982 and 2003 make up 27% of the population. Table 7 U.S. Census shows 307,007 (in thousands) total population. 88,880 are between 8 and 29, so it's actually 28.95%. The authors save their damning comments for a CNN survey that had a questionable 10% of respondents under 34. I need to see CNN's viewer statistics, but I'm betting 8-29 year olds aren't watching CNN period, and would it matter if they were? OurTime president swings another balloon hammer at CNN. A little book "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff, written in 1954 still applies now. More than is a great advertising gimmick. More than/less than is meaningless. Americans 18-34 years are not Americans born between 1982-2003, and therefore not Millennials as defined by the reporters. Americans 18-34 representing more than 30% of people over 18 is statistically insignificant in their argument, and a lie. The number is 21%. The other naked emperor in the room is that chances are outstanding that Millennials are not spending their own money. They are spending mom and dad and grandpa and grandma's money. Statistically, and with real buying power, this is the group to write ads for, to attract, to jump up and down on statistics about.

Marketing to Me: Advertising Discovers Boomers

Cloris Leachman in a leather jacket. Ziggity BOOM! Network Solutions' new Go Granny campaign got me to call. My ziggity boomer side winced at the granny, but I am also senior, sensible & savvy and dislike the tata godaddy ads. NS was smart to offer an alternative image and I'll move my business from godaddy. The man I talked with said the phones are ringing off the hook. That's cool. I worked in industrial advertising for decades and liked the work because it's simple: appeal to the greatest number of potential customers and make your current customers happy with the decision to buy. We savvy women and men aged 55-64 have a whole lot of money to spend nurturing our businesses. Women entrepreneurs are the fastest growing small business segment. Job creation is rising in the women-owned business realm. We buy and we influence major purchase decisions. Women not only buy purses and make-up, we buy high tech, industrial and automobiles. I remember years ago at dinner with a newly-arrived automotive marketing vp from the UK. This is Detroit, so he was with one of the formerly Big 3. I asked him what his plans were for marketing to women. He said, "you can't market to women." At that time - circa 1985 - women influenced a new car buying decision at about 75%. It was the 80s so influencing was a far as we got. Little wonder we had to bail these birds out 25 years later. I saw the taglines on an msnbc blip about marketing to Boomers yesterday. The 30-something man and woman discussing it talked about brighter colors and Depends. I saw the spot. Honestly. Who the hell cares what color your Depends are? It's a start, long overdue. It will get better, once the ad agencies aren't chockablock with 30-something boys who dream of Mad Men women, instead of 401k-cashing, business-starting, fast-car-driving, motorcycle-owning, techsavvy women like us.