cellini's Diaryland Diary

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Doing a Something

I have like 5 other entries that I wrote in the last week in Gmail drafts but haven't posted yet. Oops. I'll get to that soon.

Meanwhile, stuff. My book contract FINALLY showed up. It came yesterday, I signed it, and immediately dropped it in the mail back to my publishers. I am totally official now. I am a professional author.

Tomorrow we're going out to this 150 acre property to see if it will work as a one stop location for teaching classes. Paul and F. are both crazily gung ho now about us offering more classes and expanding this whole thing into a school. I dunno. I think they are getting really worked up but not thinking things through enough. All 3 of us and our wives and kids are going out to this house/property tomorrow.

I got an email from the head of our local NPR affiliate asking me to make a story for them. They want to do something on kudzu, so she wants me to put on a little event where we cook and eat kudzu and they can cover it. Not something that I really had any interest in doing, but I agreed to it just to help them out. I found a chef to work with about an hour ago. Now I need a kitchen and a few articulate volunteers to be there to eat the various preparations and explain what they taste like. I'll get my books plugged and so forth.

Really, I should be flattered that all of these news outlets have come to look at me as someone who can regularly deliver content when they need something to cover. This is the situation that I was trying to create. I fill a need for them. Therefore when I need publicity for something, they are always going to be there for me.

Man, I have really got a great network of people to work with right now. Both here and in NYC. I have about a dozen people who have become part of my orbit or whatever. People with important skills who make me look good again and again. A skinner, 3 chefs, a blacksmith, an anthropologist, several cinematographers, etc.

One of the things that I have learned in going through all of this is that everyone is waiting for the guy who will do something.

What I'm doing isn't even all that amazing. But I'm doing a something.

'Hey, that guy is doing something! Lets all go over there and look at what that guy is doing! Wow, I wish I was doing a something. I want to do this something. Can I do some of your something? I want to help with the something right now. Please let me in on the something.'

That is how it goes, pretty much, With people as individuals and in terms of dealing with the media. The bar is extraordinarily low. All you really need is to have a something and then keep doing it and keep talking about it while you're doing it and the world will beat a path to your door.

At the end of the day, I'm kind of an aloof guy. I'm not very warm and fuzzy. Not a glad-handing type. This was part of why I left politics right when I was on the cusp of running for office in my own right. Yet I keep getting emails from people thanking me for my 'strong leadership.'

Leader? I guess that I kind of get it, but I've never been comfortable with it. When I take on a leadership role I'm usually not comfortable with the results after a few days. In more professional development things than I can even recall, this has happened. It is fucking alienating. They treat me like something 'other.' I'm not part of the gang. I'm not out at the bar or whatever afterward. There's a wall. Some strange assumption that I am above recreation. A deference to whatever I suggest.

Do you have any idea how fucking weird it is to be speaking for an hour or longer and have everybody in the room writing down every single word that you say? What. The. Fuck.

I'm sorry: I don't mean to sound like an ass. This shit literally happens to me again and again. And it is fucking alienating up there on that pedestal.

I think sometimes that Jenny is the only one who ever really got me. She's been out of communication for a long time now and I really miss her.

8:34 p.m. - 2010-05-22

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