Hello world!

Hello world indeed! The default title for this first post feels apropos. I first bought this domain when you were born and it was obvious from the moment I saw you on the ultrasound screen in mommies belly that you were eager to say “Hello world!”. You were holding up your hands and exploring them. You looked happy. Something happened to me in that moment and I somehow captured your entire essence. One that is consistent with my experience to this day. It wouldn’t be long before you added “I like your dress!” and “I like your shoes!” and “What’s your name?”. Positive, curious, supportive, and eager to take the reigns. Of course you’ve cried, and of course you threw tantrums pretty much from 2 to 4 straight, but your spirit is clear and you shine like no other.

About a month before you were born, as the gravity of your arrival became stronger, I grew more anxious about bringing you into this world. I’ve long felt that mankind is in a downward spiral and that I had no business subjecting someone new to this mess. I’ll expound on this more later but suffice it to say, this is the reason I didn’t have a child until I was 45, quite late by most standards. To make things worse, I was doing very well financially but I felt morally bankrupt and empty. I didn’t like the corporate work I was doing and I felt I had become selfish and reckless with my relationships. Somewhere I had gotten off track and soon I was to face you. You were the catalyst for change and I knew it was coming. At that time I wrote a short essay called Evelyn’s Future which is the inspiration for the title of this journal.

September 25th, 2011

 

Sometimes it seems like the world we live in isn’t the REAL world. Everyday I discover that something we consider to be normal is… well… not normal. In fact, it’s so not normal that it’s actually the reverse, making it dangerous, irresponsible and negligent. Whether it’s something obvious like our addiction to fossil fuel or our increasingly processed and pesticide laden food supply, or something less obvious like what we’ve come to value or what we find aesthetically pleasing. I say less obvious because we consider these to be our own preferences and therefore, of our own choosing. Are they? Aren’t our preferences built upon influences from the world around us? After decades of mass media advertising and more recently, with the advent of the web, social media and participation based marketing, is it possible to know what our own preferences really are? The messages and interactions that have come to influence our perception of what’s right and wrong have become very sophisticated indeed… and very close to home. Our friends and family are telling us truths and opinions they’ve heard from their friends and family. But where did this message originate? As a professional in the business of marketing brands and crafting social marketing campaigns, I can tell you where it might have come from.

 

Me.

 

But this isn’t about me. This is about Evelyn, my daughter. Currently she grows in my woman’s belly (well, technically not her belly but close enough). I can feel her expectations already. She’s waiting to meet me and she has high hopes. She promises to hold me accountable in the purest sense. She’ll be born with idealism in her heart and she couldn’t possibly understand the paradox of her father’s existence. And I couldn’t possibly lie to her. I became a marketer to learn the “art of influence,” which I still consider to be a valuable art. But where you choose to apply it makes all the difference in the world. In both whether it’s ethical, or monetarily viable. But what is ethical anyway? The brands I help market aren’t particularly egregious in nature. Soap? Cough medicine? Potato chips? Pretty basic stuff.

 

Considering ethics are based on social norms, and I posit above that our social norms are distorted by industry influence, let me offer an alternate definition. It is unethical to feel something is right or wrong in your heart, and not act accordingly. That’s it. Why are MY morals in jeopardy? I’ll tell you. I feel, in my heart, that humanity has screwed Evelyn’s future. That our lifestyle and preferences are not sustainable and that in her lifetime she will suffer from our greed, weakness, indecision, and apathy. To date, I have approached sustainability half hearted, in both how I choose to live, and how my work influences how other people choose to live.

 

Evelyn does not approve.

 

Thus begins my journey to rediscover right and wrong, not through my own eyes, but through hers. I hope to meet her expectations and help save Evelyn’s future.

So there you have it. An expression of my every desire to do right by you. We just passed the 5 year mark since I wrote that and indeed much has changed with me. However, one thing I clearly failed to do was keep this journal as I intended, document my changes, and document your growth. Rather than trying to catch us up, I’m just gonna start writing. Mainly because you’re asking things of me like “tell me about Jesus daddy” which I don’t have worked out yet. I thought I did but now that your asking I realize it’s become complicated and tangled up with things that other people are saying, and the last thing I want to do is confuse you. I have to allow for what you’ve heard while reshaping it away from dogma. Mainly, I don’t want you forming strong opinions before you’re old enough to form them for yourself.

This is YOUR world Evelyn. Everybody thinks they know what is going on but they don’t. Not maw maw, not mommy, not me. All of our opinions are borrowed and built on the opinions of others. Listen, watch, learn, explore, test, make mistakes, take a position, take the other position, do it all but don’t take any one person’s words for truth. Recognize them as perspectives that you must consider and incorporate into your own. Whether you choose to align with them or against them, don’t dismiss them. That’s how you get blindsided. Because you thought things were ONE way. They’re not. They’re every way. You simply choose your path through it all, what you expose yourself to. Your attitude determines how you let it shape you. That’s why we talk about the choices you make all the time and how your attitude is also a choice. These choices are what make it YOUR world.