Category: Observations

Sunset in Seattle

As some of you know, we’re on the road again. Right now we’re up in Seattle, where I’m running our semi-annual Internet Success Makers Group workshop.
Anyways, I wanted to share this amazing view with you – this is the sunset last night from our hotel room in Seattle:

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Do What You Love – Love What You Do

I found myself saying this to a friend today – I always say “do what you love, and love what you do”, but today what flowed from me somehow seemed more profound, and I felt that I should put pixel to screen, to make sure that I had it down somewhere, so here it is:

“You know you should do what you love, and love what you do, right? To truly become an expert on something you need not only the knowledge and information, but you need the passion. Then the opportunities don’t just flow to you – your very energy and enthusiasm creates them!”

Do New Yorkers Walk Fast or is Everybody Else Just Slow?

I walk quickly. I always have. I chalk it up to being a New Yorker. Because, you know, New Yorkers walk fast. We’re busy people, and we have places to go, and things to see.

Even when we aren’t in New York. (Even, in fact, when we haven’t lived in New York for many years.)

You can take the fast walker out of New York, but you can’t take the fast New York out of the walker. Or something like that.

Now here’s the thing:

All you people out on the sidewalks who aren’t from New York – all you people who walk so agonizingly sloooooowly – and you know who you are – you’re in our way!

You’re holding up traffic!

Get the heck out of the way!

Move to the right, so that we can pass you.

No..further.

The Smell of Books

I went to the library today – it was the first time that I’d been there in a few months, and when I walked in, I was immediately struck by the smell.

Now, I don’t mean that the library smelled bad. Quite the opposite.

It was the smell of books, and it was heavenly – almost heady.

There’s just something about the smell of books – it’s the smell of literature, the smell of information – it’s the smell of knowledge.

Walking down the stacks is a sensory experience to which nothing else compares. The smell of the books – the rows and rows and rows – the feel of their heft in your hands.

When I was at university, I did a research project for which I got to use original source materials. Where I went to university they had an amazing collection of old books, and when I tread – oh so lightly and in an almost euphoric state – among the stacks of the old book collection, it was like being in the presence of history itself. Books that I picked up and opened were from other centuries, and had leather bindings, gold leaf letters, and unslit pages.

I was humbled.

And they smelled divine.

Now don’t get me wrong – I really like my Kindle too.

But nothing – ever – will take the place of books.