Feel like a broken record?
When you are a parent, it is so easy to sound like a broken record.
The truth is, though, you will feel that way much sooner than your message hits home. You just need to keep focussed on your key values.
When you are the brother or sister, son or daughter, who sees through the Covid narrative, it is so easy to sound like a broken record.
The truth is, though, you will feel that way a much sooner than your message hits home. You just need to keep focussed on your key values.
When you are the neighbor, the coworker, the friend who sees through the Covid narrative, it is so easy to sound like a broken record.
The truth is, though, you will feel that way much sooner than your message hits home. You just need to keep focussed on your key values.
Things are a lot like that in my line of work, too.
And no matter how much I may start to feel like a broken record, this is generally true: I have no right to feel this way.
In fact, the way I should be feeling is more like this: I can never repeat myself enough to my audience.
Some people don’t click on emails, so you need to reach those folks other ways.
Of those who click, they don’t always read it all.
Of those who read it all, the ideas might not all hit home.
Even a highly motivated person might need to hear about an idea five times or more before leaping into action.
Yesterday, I could have easily said, “I have asked for donations so many times that I am getting sick of asking for them.”
But by saying such a thing, there would be an important lesson here that I am overlooking:
IT’S GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW I FEEL.
It’s about you. You are my reader. I exist as a writer to reach you.
My success as a writer does not have a thing to do with how wonderful I think my books are if no one ever reads them. My success as a public intellectual does not have a thing to do with how wonderful I think my words are if no one ever puts the ideas to use. My success as an organizer does not have a thing to do with how wonderful I think my ideas are if no one ever acts on them.
If I want my ideas to hit home, they need to be delivered in a way that hits home with YOU, not in a way that hits home with me. That was a reminder I received yesterday morning when a reader sent me the following.
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Dear Mr. Stevo:
Does Project Accountability have a website? Donate page?
Don't pass up a chance to ask for donations when you send an email...
Yours truly,
Nick
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Just when I was getting sick of asking for money, I received a reminder to keep asking for money.
Project Accountability has no website. It, by design, is a project that I hope will go pretty much unnoticed by authorities until they have no idea how someone who they have never heard of (their local Project Accountability activist) has so effectively cornered them.
But dear reader, dear Nick, I will, though I can barely stand the idea of including this link, I will include it. This is the link for donating to the work being done by my team and me.
It will all be put to good use. If you wish to earmark your donation for a specific project, such as Project Accountability, just email me saying “I would like this to go toward Project a
Accountability,” and we will earmark it as such.
Thank you, Nick, for the encouragement to keep focussed on my work. That does not just mean to keep writing, and to keep communicating core values in an entertaining way, but it also means to keep providing ways by which you and other readers can get more involved by doing things such as tapping here in order to give to Project Accountability as my team and I build out the platform that will allow this project to take off successfully.
And as you go through this day, please keep something in mind: please do not ever convince yourself that you sound like a broken record.
The term “silent majority” can be used with an air of self-righteousness at times, as if being in an inactive majority somehow makes someone right.
It is the silence of a majority of good people that has gotten us into this mess. Our words and especially our actions will help get us out. Keep saying those words, undeterred by anyone. Keep acting.
How easy it can be to get tired of repeating yourself. But the truth is, just as you start to get tired, is often right about when you have broken through that wall. It is right when you have to stay even more focussed.
It has even been said to me that fatigue is a tool of the devil. That, of course, is not always true. But sometimes it is.
Fight through the fatigue, and keep doing that thing that is good. In doing so, you will often emerge in a far more meaningful place for having dealt with the temporary discomfort by staying focussed on your values.
Thank you for your efforts dear warrior.
And if you wish to give to Project Accountability, and my other efforts, I invite you to give here at this link, any amount large or small. It will all help in advancing that mission toward accountability for the wrongs of 2020 and beyond.
Allan Stevo