Category Archives: writing

Not Writing

It’s OK not to have anything to write about. But if you want to call yourself a writer, you kind of have to write. So, even if you have no idea what to put on that page, just sit down and write the first things that come to mind.

You could write about how busy things are. About how life keeps “getting in the way” of your writing. You could talk about all of the scribbles of ideas you would love to expand on but don’t quite have it together enough yet to do so. Because, for many of us, developing ideas takes quiet spaces and empty schedules and those are hard to come by right now.

You could write about how much more interested in reading you are than writing. About how that reading, even though brief, further keeps you from expressing your thoughts. Because you feel you just can’t measure up. But even this is an opportunity to explore those feelings with words. Just simply force yourself to sit down and start typing.

Because, ultimately, it is all of these things that you experience and observe, from the most exciting, to the most philosophical, to the most mundane, that are your potential subjects. Life, is your muse. Look around you.

Those wooden boxes. Made of bamboo. Chosen not just because they fit those impossible cubby holes in the hutch of your desk, but also because the soothing blond tones juxtapose nicely with the cherry wood desk. That desk that you knew you must have when you saw it but was gone at the original location by the time you actually decided to buy it. The one that caused you to then drive to seven other locations before finally finding the last two. Both of which you bought. On sale.

These little small coups that make you happy just by remembering them are perfect fodder for when you need to get the fingers warmed up to type.

See, there’s plenty to write about. Plenty you have to say. Even about nothing at all. Even if it’s writing about not writing.

Friendship, Influence, and When Words Are Not Enough

We often do not realize the influence our words and deeds have. We generally go about our lives mindless to the fact that every action, and every word, not only has meaning but has ripple effects that may mean something greater then you ever intended or thought possible.

I know I’m guilty of this more so than any writer who seeks audience and influence should be. It’s quite paradoxical. I write to spur discussion and perhaps to provide others with another way to look at the world and, perhaps, themselves. Yet, am completely surprised when someone reaches out to tell me that I have made them do just that. Especially when it is someone who I greatly admire and consider an influence and mentor to me.

Such is the case with my friend Erica. [She recently reached out in this way via a post on her blog](http://swirlspice.com/reverb10-december-16-friendship/) in response to a [Reverb 10 prompt on friendship](http://www.reverb10.com/december-16-friendship/). Let me tell you a bit about Erica. She is smart. Beautiful. Out. Proud. Passionate. Sweet. Opinionated. She is someone who I have not had a chance to spend near enough time with and long to get to know better. That said, who she is, the way she lives her life, as well as all of the qualities mentioned before have been a tremendous lesson to me.

She is also one of a handful of people I consider a member of my “Board of Directors”. This a a small group of friends that I reach out to for sanity checks and feedback on all of these crazy ideas I have. Why? Because she has the courage and grace to both support and challenge with kindness and a strong desire to help my ideas succeed.

That said, here we are a couple of years into our friendship, only fully sharing these truths with each other for the first time. And, though we are doing so in a public forum, make no mistake that these are as much revelations to ourselves. Because, even for us writers, I think words are often not enough to express the complex nuances of a deep caring and respect for another. The word “like” too simple. The word “love” risks being taken in many ways without the proper modifiers.

But the fact is that words have not been needed and even now are as much recognition and formality. For it is simply sufficient to say that she is my friend, and I know she considers me the same. And that is enough.

Welcome To The Future

A foreword written for the book iPad Means Business by Julio Ojeda-Zapata.

It is the future. It is a revolution. The overthrow of an industry. The takeover of a market. When everything we thought about technology changed. The point where the computer truly became personal. Also, it is just the beginning.

If I had to describe to a random stranger who had never seen the iPad, and was asked what it was, my answer might include some of the previous exclamations. This is a device that is the realization of many Hollywood visions of what a computer might be in some far off time – from Star Trek to Minority Report. It feels far ahead of everything else available today. Something in the back of the mind suggests that you have something you should not yet have, yet do.

Take it out in a public place and you are likely to get even the shyest person in the crowd approaching you and asking for a demonstration. They can not contain themselves from asking for a look at this thing they may have seen in commercials or in a display at the mall, yet still could not believe actually existed. Like a jet pack, or a flying car, or any of the other things we all were promised we would have in the 21st century, but the true pace of progress proved otherwise. Yet this – a computer nearly the width of a pencil, with a display the dimensions of a page of paper, that you manipulate with the touch of your fingers – this future is real.

Give it to a child and within minutes, with little to no instruction, they get it. It may be future to us who have been given a certain unescapable paradigm about what a computer is and how we interact with it. To a child, this is very much of their time. Raised with a much shorter period of interaction with a keyboard and mouse and in an age when they can play console games by waving a wand at a screen. To them, this is second nature. It is in these times that you realize the iPad is very much a device of the now. It is the way it always should have been and henceforth will be. The children of today will likely grow up with only the faintest of memories of what a keyboard and mouse was. The idea of any barrier to direct physical interaction with a computer will seem as distant as one that takes up an entire room is to us.

This is also a computer that is easy for older people to use. No complicated file systems to navigate. No lofty concepts to grasp. Just clear, easy to launch applications. Those who may have found computers too complicated, mice and keyboards too confusing, can find their solace with the iPad. A new world of where a simple touch will allow them access to the internet, email, photos, books, and friends.

But don’t let the ease of use for the young and old alike distract you. This is also the ideal tool for todays modern mobile worker. Far more portable than a laptop. Less intrusive in a meeting. Able to wield email and presentations with equal speed and aplomb. Alone it is an adept productivity tool. When paired with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard, it can hold it’s own against any mobile device. Together, the speed and length with which one can produce results in a word processor or email program is limited only by ones ability. In fact, this entire chapter was written this way.

The word that Apple has used repeatedly to describe the iPad is “magical”. While this may seem simply just a marketing buzzword, there is a certain truth to it. When you use the device, you become so immersed in the interaction, that the device itself seems to “disappear” until whatever application you are using is all you are left holding in your hands. Studies have shown that we form an emotional bond with the things we hold or touch. The fundamentals of how you get things done can really change when you can hold your email in your hands? Or your music? Or the internet itself. How you feel and experience these things changes as well.

The reason the hardware disappears is because the software feels natural. When browsing digital photos for instance, they react in a way that is as natural as interacting with the traditional printed kind. When reading a book, the pages turn with the same speed as they would when leafing through a physical one. In every case where there is a real world metaphor, something familiar outside of a computer, it behaves as one would expect. No delay, no separation. It is this attention to detail that the magicians used for the wondrous alchemy that happens when using the iPad.

One more thing about the iPad is that there is no right way to hold it. Stand up with it, sit down, lie back in bed. Pick up the iPad and the screen will rotate to fit your view. Hand it to someone else and it will flip again to theirs. This makes it amazingly easy to share it with others. Hand it across the table at a meeting. This is a social machine. Pass it to your friend to share a funny video. Have a child sit in your lap while your read them a book from it. Unlike other computers that are often barriers to interaction, the iPad is purposefully made for it.

We will look back on this time as a moment when everything we had come to know about computers changed. It is not hyperbole to say that this is a historic shift for technology. And it is just the start. The iPad is still young by any standard. And if this is just the start, it begs the question of what is yet to come. Something even more magical, more revolutionary, and more unbelievable yet real. Welcome to The Future.

This book, written by crack technology writer and pundit Julio Ojeda-Zapata, is here to guide you through this new age. He will show real world examples of professionals, creatives, and others just like you getting real work done using the iPad and having a lot of fun doing so. I know I am.

Enjoy.