Really hard for me to have a poker face. I wouldn’t make a good politician.
in·spiredinˈspī(ə)rd/adjectiveOf extraordinary quality, as if arising from some external creative impulse.
This is an interesting time of my life. I’ve entered “retirement”. While I’m still young enough to enjoy this new adventure.
But according to Ernest Hemingway, “Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.” To many, it has such negative connotations: old, worn out, past your prime, unproductive, ceasing work, elderly, resigned, quitting, giving up.
That is NOT what I mean. I’m giving up the corporate life that was wearing me out. That life of meetings, email, conference calls, politics, compromises, all day, everyday.
Now I’m inspired, not retired.
I must be lazy. Or just bored easily. Whenever I have to do something more than once, I think, “How can I do this so I never have to do it again?” “What can I do to make is super easy to modify it without starting from scratch?”
I was never a programmer, but if I were, I would have embraced OOP (object-oriented programming). Why in the world would you want to write and maintain common code any other way?
A simple example is something I did in Illustrator to create a small set of people to use in presentations. I created layers of common objects such as the basic head and shoulders, the circle, the background. Then I created separate layers for things like hair, clothing, and objects to depict their function. Mix and match to create a new person. Rather than saving each of these as its own Illustrator file, I simply export the combination as a png file and keep all of the objects as layers in Illustrator. If I want to change the background color, I only need to change the layer with the background once and then export each version of the image with the new background.
Have you created a library of common objects, messages, and content that are easily reusable by your team? Icons, graphics, boilerplate text. Templates with styles, colors, fonts, and layout pre-defined. These time savers are not just for the big guys who have creative departments.
Now I’m off to spend my time savings doing something fun.
Well not literally. This is someone else diving in. I have never looked like this, diving or otherwise.
But I’m diving into blogging. A good friend told me that if I wasn’t already blogging, I’d never blog.
Ha! You’re wrong, Steve. This time, anyway. And I’m assuming this still counts as a post even though it’s under 100 words.
Is snippiting a word? That’s what I’m doing, creating snippets. Some will be fun, some useful. If you want more than that, check out someone else’s blog.
OK, I guess I’m not really blogging after all.
marketing snippets 