Quoth the raven, "lookin' good!"

I have weird bird karma. I've discovered a drowned starling in a bucket in my yard, been pecked in the head by an angry magpie defending her nest, and had a kamikaze robin hit my kitchen window full blast. A few months ago, on a walk in the Berkeley Hills with my daughter, we were in the middle of our 59th conversation about whether she should dump her dullard boyfriend when we were interrupted by a loud tap-tap-tapping coming from a sixties-modern wood house just above us.

The house had a huge picture window of mirrored glass, to take advantage of the choice Bay view while protecting the owners' privacy. Perched on the ledge of that window was an enormous raven, locked in spellbound interaction with her reflection. She pecked repeatedly on the glass and then suddenly stopped – as did the bird in the mirror. When the raven abruptly cocked her head to the left, her reflection followed in perfect synchrony. Mesmerized, the raven kept coming up with more tricks as she watched her doppelganger imitate her every move. I claim no scientific expertise. I realize I am anthropomorphizing and an ornithologist might say I was full of malarkey. Yet it seemed, to my untrained and undisciplined eye, as though the raven understood that the big, black, shiny-feathered bird in the window was indeed herself.

I thought no more about this rather wonderful animal encounter until recently, when I came upon a crazed ... swallow, perhaps? (Sorry, I am not a birder, but I can learn). Caught in a dance of death with the side mirror of a car, he kept charging the glass and smashing his little beak against his reflection. Then he would swoop around and rest on top of the mirror for two seconds before attacking again, over and over, like some Avian Sisyphus. I waved my arms and made noise to try and distract him, but the poor bird was intent on destroying his nemesis in the mirror. I gave it up to nature - it would have taken a butterfly net to catch him and break the spell. But I had to conclude that the raven had it all over this little birdbrain (Yes, I'm going there, it's my damn blog).

I knew some birds were highly intelligent. A woman I used to work with had a pet conure. A rain forest native, he liked to shower with his mistress. Whenever she got in the way of his "rain", he signaled for her to move by gently pecking her foot. I read Alex and Me, Irene Pepperberg's book about her amazing experiments with Alex, the parrot genius. To briefly summarize his exploits, this brilliant bird could form 3-word, intentional sentences, such as "Alex want corn". He sorted blue and green blocks by shape and color. He could count up to seven, and unlike the circus horse who'll keep tapping his hoof 'til his trainer gives him the signal to stop, Alex understood the concept of counting.

I looked up ravens. Turns out, ravens, crows, jays, and magpies are all corvids and they are the brainiacs of the bird world, not including parrots who may be as or more intelligent depending on your school of thought. There are definitely some who think ravens have figured out that the bird in the mirror is them. This is very advanced animal thinking - even dogs don't understand this. Elephants do.

I was fortunate enough, on both of my walks, to stumble upon two live demonstrations of what animal behaviorists call the Mirror Test: Observing what a given species does when confronted with its reflection. Can a creature even "read" the image in the mirror or does it just see a play of light and shape? Does the animal think it is looking at a fellow member of its species, like that single-minded swallow so determined to destroy his rival in the car mirror? Is there evidence of a higher level of thinking, as with the raven, where the test subject realizes "that's me"? And is it really the pinnacle of awareness to peer into that mirror and think, "That's me, and these love handles have got to go"?


Links

http://www.all-birds.com/brain.htm

http://pages.cthome.net/rwinkler/crowintel.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)

http://www.gardengrapevine.com/TerritorialBirds.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14552-mirror-test-shows-magpies-arent-so-birdbrained.html

Films to rent

Winged Migration

The Parrots of Telegraph Hill

Books to Read

Mind of the Raven

Whitewash

Ask people about Berkeley High and they all say the same thing: " It's either very good or very bad." Meaning, if your kid is motivated, there's sports, art, drama, music (with a renowned jazz ensemble), swim team (including a huge pool), international baccalaureate and AP classes up the wazoo. You've got all the resources you need to get junior into an Ivy or UC Berkeley. But if your kid is an underachiever whose only goal is to "do what I have to to make it through the system and accommodate my parents' values", you're in for it. Our son's first and last period teachers couldn't be bothered to take attendance, so those were the two periods he skipped most often. He also managed to come to class stoned more than once, but that, apparently, is why they call it Berkeley High. Don't even get me started on his friends. Suffice to say, they are not in the International Baccalaureate program.

So it was time, once again, for a school change. The short term goal was to get the little albatross in an environment where the teachers take attendance, parents get notified about drug or alcohol abuse and kids are suspended for bad behavior. If he makes new friends, so much the better. As for the long-term goal – well, we stopped having those a while back.

We ruled out private school because 1. He can't get in anywhere, 2. We can't shell out right now and 3. It won't make a damn bit of difference unless he makes up his mind to do the work. We toyed with moving back to the East Coast where we might have more of a support system, but there's no job for me to go back to. In fact, every single one of my friends at my former place of employment has been laid off.

You worry about your children until you die, but you only raise them for a brief period of time - especially when you have a kid who's intent, however misguidedly, on raising himself. In a couple of years, the boy will be attending community college, learning a trade, riding the rails or beginning his career as a night club bouncer. Eventually, we hope he realizes there's more to life than having a good time. Meanwhile, we have to think about where we would like to live once he is off doing his thing or figuring out what his thing might be.

Strolling through the Berkeley Hills on a glorious June day, I had an epiphany: I no longer want to move back East. We don't have the stomach for any more upheaval and none of the major decisions we've made have helped straighten out our son. Not the wilderness program, not the boarding school or the private school or the cross country move (which to be fair was partly motivated by my husband's chronic California dreaming). Besides, I love it here. I want to live where a beach, a mountain or a redwood grove are all less than an hour away. I want to watch the fog creep over the hill tops. I want to look out the window and see a teeny-tiny, lime green humming bird hovering by a tree full of teeny-tiny, lime green limes. Maybe this is an aesthete's version of hedonism and maybe it's more profound. Some people do church: I do nature.

We settled on moving to Orinda, a quiet suburban community just on the other side of the Berkeley Hills. The high school is small and secluded. It's a closed campus. They take attendance, and there's nowhere to go if you cut class. If the boy messes up, he'll get suspended or maybe expelled, which is as it should be.

Having decided to make a local move, we faced a complicated schedule: We needed to be out on the 21st but couldn't move in to our new rental place until the first. I had to work three days a week, for both weeks of the transition, and since I don't own a lap top, that meant shlepping my regular macintosh. We put the kid on a plane to Minneapolis to go see his friend from last year's boarding school, after which we hit the road for Yosemite and the Eastern Sierras.

After a too-brief mountain interlude, we had to head back so I could return to work. My husband, my mac and I spent our last three transitional days – thank you Mileage Plus – at Berkeley's fabulous old Claremont Hotel. Just 7 years shy of its 100th birthday (2016) the Claremont is elegant and honking-huge, with a classic, subdued decor and quiet, comfortable rooms. There's a very nice gym, tennis and pool club on the grounds. The landscaping features plenty of healthy, hearty, two-toned roses in romantic hues. The lobby, with its well polished dark wood counter and striking period chandeliers, evokes the ghosts of visitors past. And alas, the Claremont too looks like a ghost, as it has been painted, from foundation to roof, a hideous, unrelenting, blinding white.



At first, I accepted this strange uni-whiteness as an unfortunate fact of life. Perhaps painting it white was a green thing to do. But then, by the elevator I noticed a reproduction of an old, framed photo of the Claremont as it was meant to be. Not Casper-the-friendly-hotel, but a neo-Tudor castle.The building faces several directions at once yet somehow the whole thing works. Every outer wall is buttressed (or probably merely adorned) with precisely cut, meticulously installed beams. It's a prodigious amount of beautifully executed labor. I did a quick internet search but all I learned is that the paint job isn't new. By the mid-forties, the hotel already looked like a white, plastic toy building, abandoned at the base of the hillside by some giant, puckish toddler.



So now I am settled in Orinda, and I need to find my way out of this yarn, but I can't really tie the big white hotel back to anything. I could compare that paint job to the tough exterior my kid affects, but that would be pushing it. I could muse wistfully about a few days' limbo free from parental responsibilities towards someone who doesn't believe such a thing should exist. Nothing like hotel life for taking you out of your reality. But the true metaphor here is that I don't know the ending. For this post, and for that handsome, obstinate, rebellious boy, my son.

On hiatus.

I have temporarily lost my mind due to a difficult move. We had to move out on the 21st but couldn't get into the new place before the first. I had to schlep my non-laptop computer around and set it up in hotels so I could work. Now, I am in a new place, surrounded by boxes. My husband is grouchy because his internet's not working. My kid is nasty because he didn't want to move and is choking on his own testosterone. My daughter is having her 25 year life crisis a couple of years early and has decamped for the East coast. My supply of St. John's Wort has run out. The only sane person around here right now is the dog. Consequently, please bear with me while I unpack, clean cabinets, write hospital brochures and howl at the moon.

Hope and Dread

When my friend Rob is faced with a difficult choice, or when life is simply being hormonal, he likes to slap himself, in an hommage to Faye Dunaway in Chinatown. "My sister. My daughter. My sister. My daughter," he cries. This is a pretty close approximation of how I feel after two years on the West Coast.

There is a corner in front of a Friends' Meeting House in North Berkeley, where vagrants, eccentrics and the occasional mangy professorial type congregate to smoke, argue and promote world peace. Last month as I walked by, I noticed a fellow with a single, remarkably wide grey dread sticking out of the back of his head.

East Coast me went crazy over the thing. It looked like a beaver tail. No, it didn't. It looked like tribble road kill. No, it didn't. It looked like a petrified hair ball retrieved from the gut of a fossilized saber-toothed tiger. Yes. It. Did.

I was musing over the eerie similarities between the dreadlock and a big wad of dryer lint when West Coast me commandeered my brain. Wait a minute. This guy is clean, harmless, being himself. He washes that dread. Perhaps he even irons it. How intolerant, how small, how judgmental of me to entertain myself by mocking the man's choice of hairstyle.

I am wracked by this kind of ambivalence. Just this week,waiting my turn at the CVS register, I froze in fascination at the sight of an elderly lady - a Goya hag with Lautrec coloring. Eighty if she was a day, with brutally ground-in rouge and long, thin cotton-candy hair dyed a faded peach color. She wore a short skirt and leggings and was entirely bedecked in rhinestone jewelry - necklaces, earrings, bracelets. She sashayed proudly past me with her old (and I do mean old) man at her side. East Coast me was appalled. I felt awful for her. I wondered how can one not see the mirror, lose perspective to that extent, be that delusional?

But West Coast me was amused. You had to give her credit for trying. The old girl had spunk. She was having a good time. Why be mortified for her when she would never in a million years feel that way?

My sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter.

In these lean economic times, it's hard to find the right tone in which to talk, the right frame of mind from which to function. When all your friends are unemployed, you don't want to hear some bleeping Pollyanna's delusional thinking. You feel like you should look reality right in the eyeballs. And yet too much hand wringing isn't constructive either because we must all persevere. If you are fortunate enough to be making some money – even if it can't compare to your salad days – if you are paying your bills, then this is no time to feel sorry for yourself. Everyday, I see people suck in their guts, smile gamely and push on as best they can. So yeah, you can indulge in the gallows humor, in the right context, with the right folks. But you have to remain positive. No matter what coast you're on, it's the right thing to do.

Algo-rhythms

My kid blew his Socratic English oral. He was downgraded for his style of discourse - oppositional and defiant – but not for his argument, that machines could never be truly human. This is a popular science fiction theme whose romantic expression is the story of the sensitive android with genuine emotions. A darker take on this concept has machines less concerned with experiencing love than running the show - in these stories, robots and computers take over human situations, or maybe even entire planets.

I'm a sucker for such yarns. I feel for the soulful replicant and fear the all-knowing power-mad machines. Still, it's hard not to take comfort in the fact that while my computer is no doubt smarter than me, I still have to call upon a human to save the day if my hard drive crashes.

It took true genius to puncture my smug human superiority. Itunes genius, the application that, based on a single song, puts together spot-on mixes from your music collection. Genius knows your every musical quirk. The bluegrass banjo riff that gives you St Vitus dance. The alt country lament you've harmonized with for so long, you forget your part isn't on the record. The obscure rock chick with the big, bad voice. The best folk singer no one's ever heard of. The sexy French electronica bon bon that always mellows you out. Your favorite U2 ballad, lesser-known Dylan song or Marvin Gaye makeout tune.

Genius has you down. It free-associates based on a modal harmony, a breathy singing style, a jazzy vibe. It can tell if your mood is randy, upbeat or introspective. Sometimes, it knows you better than your spouse. So while I appreciate the ability to make an instant playlist that perfectly matches my mental state, I'm still a little creeped out. My musical taste, which I thought was so eclectic, is apparently just another algorithm.

The strawberry's a raspberry

The yoga studio I attend follows the Anusara school. Classes are steeped in tantric philosophy, and the core concept is "opening to grace". We start class with a chant, but first, the teachers are expected to enlighten us with a story that sets the theme for the day. This might relate to the physical practice - such as maintaining the balance between muscular energy and flexibility, or the mental practice - say, letting go of poisonous thoughts.

As a skeptical, non-religious person, it took me a while to adjust to Anusara's emphasis on Hindu spirituality. I'm not much of a monotheist as it is, and adding on gods just multiplies my doubts. But it's a terrific workout, and I do believe yoga has emotional benefits as well. It has helped me face day-to-day challenges with greater equanimity, fixate less on my problems, control my anger and tolerate fools just a wee bit more gladly. I suspect my many hours in down dog have kept me from strangling my incredibly challenging 16 year old son. Plus, I can now do a handstand against the wall, which is quite an achievement for a woman in her middle years who couldn't even manage a cartwheel as a kid.

Recently, I showed up and the studio was packed. A popular teacher was in town, subbing for his sister. It turned out to be a great class: He really kicked our butts.

If only he hadn't treated us to the parable of the strawberry.

Way back in time, there was just the first man and the first woman - and the gods, for whom watching the first couple was like ancient reality tv. So one day, First Woman asks First Man "Am I the most beautiful woman in the world?" To which the dimwit answers "Well, honey, you're the ONLY woman in the world". First Woman marches off in a fit of pique, leaving First Man looking sheepish and wondering what he did wrong.

In an attempt to get First Woman to chill, the gods go on a charm initiative. Flowers bloom in time-lapse and exhale their perfumes as she walks by. Trees lob perfectly ripe apricots at her. Butterflies encircle her with flashes of nacreous color. But First Woman's got her sulk on and she's sticking to it. Just as she's worked herself into a full-blown hissy fit, she comes upon a patch of strawberries, plump and jamming sweet. Overcome by rage, First Woman starts stomping on the berries like a frustrated toddler, releasing a pink cloud of fruity fragrance. The scent proves irresistible and she suddenly finds herself scarfing down berries by the handful.

In the middle of this feeding frenzy comes First Man, contrite and ready to grovel. But First Woman smiles up at him with juice running down her face and croons, "Hi, honey!" She has forgotten all about their big conflict. As the yoga teacher explains, "She's been touched by grace."

Or maybe bulimia.

I guess if you have a non-problem like your husband not being willing to stroke your ego often enough, strawberries might do it. But if your kid is on drugs, or your spouse is leaving you for a same-sex partner, or the bank's about to foreclose on your house, even strawberry Haagen Dazs won't make it better. The parable of the strawberry is not enlightening – it's 1960s sitcom. The woman in the story is a narcissistic twit. Her behavior is a waste of time and energy and has diminishing returns, and this story revolves around outdated, sexist, stereotypes of the irrational woman fishing for compliments and the bone-headed guy wondering what do women want? But it's not the actual parable of the strawberry that disturbs me the most. It's the fact that the intelligent, educated, professional women around me were eating it up.

I am fine with the basic idea of feeling connected to nature and the life cycle. It resonates more with me than the notion of a big bearded man in the sky. But like many contemporary people, I don't need symbols and metaphors to illuminate abstract ideas. If my yoga teachers must wax philosophical, I prefer they dispense with the fables.

My friend and favorite yoga instructor is a naturalist with a masters in the study of jelly fish. She worked on the Monterey Aquarium at its inception. Her classes have themes based on nature and sometimes science. And she never tells stories about Kali, Lord Ganesh or the first man and woman. Tantric philosophy resonates with my friend's deep connection to nature, respect for the planet and general world view, but like any true scientist, she doesn't buy into mythologies.

No, I don't need a hug.

A lady in my women's networking group recently forwarded a link about the Global Hug Tour. Here's the jist of it, lifted, not plagiarized, straight off the site:

"What we're doing
Inspire Me Today Founder Gail Lynne Goodwin and her husband Darryl will take off in a small prop plane from Colorado to circumnavigate the globe and literally hug the world. The tour will stop in 45 locations over a period of five months.
On a personal mission to make a difference, they will be:
Delivering an estimated $1,000,000 to important causes throughout the tour raised through grassroots contributions from people like you
Giving at least 2,000 hugs in each location to literally wrap the world in 100,000 hugs
Gathering great wisdom, inspiration and brilliance from leaders and luminaries in the far reaches of the globe to bring back and share on InspireMeToday.com"

If you want to take part in the hugathon, all you have to do is donate $10. Multiple charities are involved and Gail and Darryl will personally deliver your donation, to the city and cause of your choice, with a big squeeze for an individual recipient. You will become an official hug ambassador and find out exactly who got embraced in your name. If the recession has left you with any discretionary income and you feel inspired, here is the link.

http://www.inspiremetoday.com/globalhugtour/

Now that I've demonstrated that I am basically well-intended and have given you the opportunity to make a donation, I'd like to speak for hug-averse people everywhere.

Our culture has gone hug-wild. A recent New York Times article described the affectionate behavior of today's High School students. Every day, students are hugging each other hello. Repeatedly. We're excited - let's hug! We're bummed - let's hug! We're dissaffected, jaded and bored - let's hug! No wonder nobody gets to class on time. Meanwhile, in the adult world, more and more of my clients and colleagues feel compelled to greet me with a squeeze and sometimes even a kiss. The first time this happens, I inevitably stiffen. Occasionally, they notice and apologize, and then we're both embarrassed.

I'm all for warmth, affection and human contact but I happen to need a large amount of personal space. It's cultural and probably genetic - we're all like this, on both sides of the family. I am a demonstrative person and truly love my friends, but I save my hugs for my husband, children and dog. I'm not heartless: if a friend is in despair and I get that please hug me vibe, I understand, and I am happy to oblige. My best friend on the planet lives in the Midwest. We stay in constant touch, but I'm lucky if I see her every other year. When we see each other, we hug. Gingerly, like a couple of porcupines. She's not a hugger either, which is probably one of the reasons we get along so well.

Regardless of one's personal space issues, hugging has its draw backs. Some are olfactory: a whiff of mothballs, a hint of body odor, a sniff of stale smoke - triple yuck. Some are self-imposed: Is my breath OK? Did I forget the deodorant? Can she tell I'm uncomfortable? Some are contagious: lice, swine flu, antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis. And then there's the occasional pervy hug, usually inflicted on a woman by a man, ostensibly in the name of camaraderie but with the ulterior motive of full body contact.

Which brings me back to that affectionate couple, the Goodwins. Have they considered that other cultures may not be so huggable? Social mores are very different in Islamic Morocco than secular France. In Thailand, it's considered extremely rude to touch someone's head. The charitable aspect of the Global Hug Tour is admirable. The Goodwins are having themselves a damn fine adventure while living up to their positive surname. But let's not forget that it is possible to touch people without using your hands.

Garden Party

No doubt the hardest thing to be in Berkeley is a Republican, but I'd say lawn gnomes are a close second. How could a mass-produced, garden variety lawn gnome not feel upstaged by Buldan Seka's hand-crafted, exuberant, outsized ceramics? Ms. Seka, an artist-in-residence at the California College of Arts and Crafts, lives in a large, rose-colored home on Spruce Street. That's number 707, should you decide to walk by, which I highly recommend you do.

A perpetual party spills out of that big, pink house. Fantastical figurative sculptures gather around the ground floor, perch on the second story terrace, and gaze out at the vast bay view from a third floor balcony. Busty queens, muscular macho men, giant terra cotta lingams, toddler-friendly zoo animals and strange creatures from the artist's personal mythology all vie for the passerby's attention. They're fun, loud, wildly decorative, strangely alive and just a wee bit creepy. I suspect the only way they'd tolerate a lawn gnome is at the end of a leash.







To read about Ms. Seka, click here.

http://buldanseka.com/

Or here.

http://www.serfed.com/content_files/dergi/28/90-95_sanat_soylesisi.pdf

Wanna see some more Berkeley garden ornaments?
Come take a walk with me.

http://eucalyptusway.blogspot.com/2008/10/lilliputian-sculpture-garden.html


http://eucalyptusway.blogspot.com/2008/10/art-lovers.html

Pencils and Tassels

Unless you're a workaholic, or battle chronic depression, you can probably think of an activity that pushes your reset button. Perhaps you play golf - or the violin. Or you put on the glitz and go ballroom dancing. You might be a daredevil with a skydiving habit. You surf, ride horses, practice yoga or bake a cake for every occasion. Maybe you just sit in your yard and see what the trees are up to.

Obviously, I like to write. But for me, one of the most centering, rewarding activities is life drawing. As corny as it sounds, I feel an existential, humanist bond with the people I sketch. If they are young and comely, I think of the promising life before them. If they are older, I try to read their laugh lines. The more you stare at your models, and this is true for both portraits and nudes, the more vulnerable they become, the more real, the more they matter. The act of drawing becomes an act of compassion. You may never learn the models' names, or anything about them, but somehow, they are no longer strangers to you.

Since I moved out to the Bay Area, I have been preoccupied with generating income, getting my teenage son straightened out and counseling my daughter about her future. I did attempt to locate a life drawing venue but found nothing convenient. Eventually, I joined The San Francisco Life Drawing Group on meetup.com and waited in vain for notice of a sketch-in. Six or eight months went by, and then today, an email:

"Come out on Tuesday, May 26th 2009 for the sexiest workshop in town! HAPPY HOUR drink specials! Why stop the Memorial Day fun on Monday? Come out on Tuesday to sketch the amazingly talented Burlesque superstar, Dottie Lux! The Burlesque Times just voted her The Best Burlesque Performer of the Month of May! This month we are inviting everyone who participates in the workshop to put their favorite drawings on display for the evening with the option to sell them if you want. We will be putting display walls up for everyone to see, so please invite your non-sketcher friends to come and check out the art and hang at the bar! As always our sponsor Baby Tattoo Books is providing beautifully printed books which we will give away as prizes for each month's drawing contest."

Apparently, this is a great opportunity to hang out with a bunch of people my daughter's age, drink mojitos and draw some heavily made-up chick in tassels, a G-string and a come-hither expression. San Francisco strikes again. I think I'm going to pass.

There's a place, and a market for erotica, and there always will be. It's just never interested me. Even Rodin's most erotic works are about more than sex. Love, youth, desire, fragility. Time stopping and time slipping away. Life emerging from paper and stone. The human condition, for God sakes. Nudity has a dignity and an eloquence that no tassel can touch.

I haven't drawn in nearly five years, but I remember all my favorite models. The lovely, flaming-haired dancer, nicknamed "the burning bush" by the younger art students. Her toes were gnarly and twisted from years of dancing en-pointe, and her coloring was made for chalk pastels. The handsome gay man with the chiseled German face and flawless male physique. The wiry Peruvian engineering student with the pre-columbian profile, whose dark skin I turned a vivid red when I sketched him in oil pastels on brown wrapping paper. The dreadlocked African American teacher who was a dead ringer for Forrest Whitaker, right down to the lazy eye. The earthy Russian girl with the face of a Slavic angel and the body of a paleolithic fertility goddess.

Only the dancer could have pulled off burlesque, but they were all beautiful to me.

Go Market Yourself!

I got a blog, you got a blog, all God's children got a blog. It's a must, along with your facebook page, your linked in page and of course, your twitter presence. The social media craze has taken hold and marketing and advertising people everywhere are inundating the internet with their personal marketing theories, insights, observations and platitudes. It's as though you were compelled to be a guru just because you're good at your job. Problem is, lots of jobs don't deserve gurufication. And lots of very competent people can't write. It is agony for them to bullshit endlessly about their jobs and philosophize about marketing. Yet in this hideous economy we keep getting told, by consultants galore, you must have a blog to be in play.

The proliferation of blogs is partly due to the the fact that a lot of us are un- or under- employed. Some people are trying to get noticed by HR people, head hunters and potential employers. Others have given up on finding a full time job and are trying to build a consulting business (from a marketing standpoint, this is the group for whom blogging about the work you do makes the most sense). But should business blogging really be for everyone?

There are two types of productive workers: The type that lives and breathes the job and becomes possessed 24/7 by its demands, and the type that works heroically, like a dog, let's say... a rescue dog. Pretty heroic. And then that person wants to go home, chill out, enjoy friends and family and compartmentalize their job away in some drawer somewhere deep in the back of their brain. This type needs to replenish or loses productivity. Compartmentalizers should enjoy their time off and not feel obligated to blog, or get ripped off by a ghost writer they have to supervise. You can be a fabulous asset to a company and not want to spend your downtime working on your personal branding.

And here's the big question I keep asking myself: If someone has no notoriety and we don't know them personally, why should we want to read their marketing verites?

OK, I know you're composing snappy retorts in your head. What exactly makes me so special? Am I some sort of Machiavellian elitist hypocrite trying to talk the competition out of blogging while I refine my online presence? Nope. I am a talkative person with few friends in a strange town. I am also a writer. This is an outlet for me. If I had to pontificate about copy writing and creative direction all the time, I would bore myself to death. I rant about whatever I please. I don't do daily updates, because life gets in the way, and sometimes I have nothing to say. And I don't try to con people on linked in into reading me by starting discussions with teaser links to my blog. Besides, for every person I might charm or amuse, there will probably be two that think I'm deeply wierd, snarky, or worst of all, dull.

Now, if you like to write and have something to say that you're passionate about, write on. About politics, cooking, travel, yoga, marketing - whatever floats your boat. But if blogging for you is like downing your morning serving of plain unsweetened oatmeal with skim milk because, gosh darn it, it's good for you, it's time you let yourself off the hook.