{"id":195,"date":"2012-10-24T23:15:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T06:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/?p=195"},"modified":"2015-11-05T00:37:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T07:37:33","slug":"i-love-this-story-of-sweat-and-candlelight-in-new-york-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/positive-thinking\/i-love-this-story-of-sweat-and-candlelight-in-new-york-city\/","title":{"rendered":"I Love This Story of Sweat and Candlelight in New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I love this story&#8221;, probably the worst headline I have ever written. And I like to think writing headlines is one of my best skills.<\/p>\n<p>Two things that have sunk into the deeper depths of my consciousness this morning. Outside my window of my garret the sky is still black, I like to get up early and this morning is was earlier than usual. 4.30am I am laying awake with the brain doing its thing, it usually starts writing a blog post and that forces me awake and   running to the keyboard before the words drift away.<\/p>\n<p>But thoughts were disrupted by two things, Ed Dale blogging about the story being the thing. Which is something I have known and thought for a long time, and a video by flip flop guru Jonathan Fields. Actually that sounds like I&#8217;m poking fun at him, I&#8217;m not, I think he&#8217;s a real cool dude with some very interesting ways of looking at things and definitely worth listening to.<\/p>\n<p>But Flip Flop Guru, I really like that term so it&#8217;s staying and I just have to work around it.<\/p>\n<p>Ed reminded me of the thing that is at the core of my being, the story. But it&#8217;s more than that, it&#8217;s that the story is at the core of making sense of the human condition. It&#8217;s not just about selling stuff, although commerce is totally something that humans are about and absolutely nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n<p>And I do realise I am getting a little existential with all this, but this is what happens when you write early morning blog posts.<\/p>\n<p>The thing is, I have been kind of disconnected with the thing I do for work. Which is really about helping websites communicate to their potential market. Tempted by the short cut I went a hard core seo route with some of the stuff I do. I never felt that OK about it, but rent needed to be paid and food placed on the table.<\/p>\n<p>However, it wasn&#8217;t me. It wasn&#8217;t what I am really good at.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m good with glueing words together and creating a great story, that is what I should focus on and stick to.<\/p>\n<p>Now Linkbaiting is a lot of what I do, this is the art of getting links by producing great content. I have no problem with this, even if some think the term invokes a certain swampishness. But it&#8217;s the other stuff that seems easy at first and suddenly you find yourself over at the dark side.<\/p>\n<p>And then I watched a video from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodlifeproject.com\/elizabeth-cutler-and-julie-rice-on-founding-soulcycle\/\">Goodlifeproject.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s quite long so I don&#8217;t expect you to watch it all, but it really struck a chord with me.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yfVEbKeGSHA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>What really burned in my brain was not that fact I want to get on a bike in candlelight and discuss the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/9717.The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being\">Unbearable Lightness of Being<\/a>, which is probably not a bad way to spend an evening. But it was the tone of the conversation, it wasn&#8217;t about getting rich, it&#8217;s wasn&#8217;t about creating Vegas penthouse piles of cash, it was simply people talking about what they could do to make things a little less dark in a drab world.<\/p>\n<p>And that is really important and resonates with me. I think that tone that Jonathan had created with the interview was very appealing and I am jealous that I don&#8217;t have it. But what&#8217;s behind the surface fabric is simply a desire to get to grips with the human condition.<\/p>\n<p>There is a conflict within me of course, and I can make the excuse it&#8217;s because I am British I like to see things a little more dark and cynical. But I don&#8217;t think all the dark bits should be jettisoned as you seek the sunlit uplands.<\/p>\n<p>I think it helps to keep an edge.<\/p>\n<p>Fascinating stuff though, at lease to me. And here&#8217;s the thing, this blog post is for me. So why send it out there? Well, because it helps me structure my thinking. If you like it, brilliant. If you don&#8217;t, it wont really matter, as I have already moved on and it&#8217;s not the point.<\/p>\n<p>The other stuff I write goes on blogs that I do want you to love and get excited about.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the sky is developing into a blackened blue. The light is so hypnotic this time of day, and I am going to get a nice cup of tea and some toast with the kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I love this story&#8221;, probably the worst headline I have ever written. And I like to think writing headlines is one of my best skills. Two things that have sunk into the deeper depths of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-positive-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lyndonantcliff.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}