Create Something That Creates You Back: A Mission Statement for This Blog

Hook—

How is a blog born? Is it born like a star, from a nebulous human being, eager to create a shining sphere? Is it hatched like a sea turtle, miles away from its mother, with an in-born instinct for how to find her? Is it bourn like a child? (I hope a child is better cared for, in most cases.)

Eh hem…

Back to Earth.

build (part 1): Intro to Idea—

If you create something personal to impart unto the world, then the thought that goes into it is a potent reflection of who you are and what you care about – just listen to any artist interviewed on NPR. This is especially true when planning an open-ended project, because it is not a singular whim; it must sustain any whim that comes along.

The decision of how to frame that work contains a certain balance between your heart, your soul, and your mind. It likely won’t be 100% all-encompassing of your worldview; it’s natural to pick a focus.

With my blog, I’m choosing to leave the possibilities open. That is part of the impression I wish to make here. There’s going to be a freedom in my approach.

Build (part 2): Grounding/Context for this Idea—

Blogs live on a spectrum from personal to professional. Most have elements of both. The intention of this one is primarily personal, with possible professional implications as an alternative sample of my writing style.

I considered tailoring my blog to appear more “professional”, but I just couldn’t fall comfortably into that notion. I thought, maybe I should focus on current events, music, family life, or something else. For a minute, I toyed with the slogan “Give a $#!+” to declare the topic of Caring, about the world, about what you do, etc. I still like that idea, but this outlet needs to stay creative for me, needs to be somewhere I can exercise my writing with pure freedom.

I often feel the professional world is starved for authenticity. To make something branded or “professional” is almost inherently to de-humanize it. Even if the effort is specifically to humanize a brand, there’s still that whiff of… bullshit. Inauthenticity. Pardon my saying so. Like that woman’s or man’s voice on the Nature Valley commercial sounds too flawlessly cheery or gravelly. The same goes for social media. Everybody curates a veneer over their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram profiles. Most blogs, professional and personal alike, have a manufactured hue over them. I don’t mean to knock these media – I know they serve purposes, and tailoring should be expected. It’s just hard to find people being themselves. I’m probably guilty of manufacturing as I write this post, even if I try not to be.

build (Part 3): to the Climax—

I want to write what I feel. If I’m not invested in it, this blog might fizzle out and become one of those where, in 2023, you see a bunch of posts marked 2019, maybe 4 or 5 marked 2020, one marked 2021, and then radio silence. I want this to be a place where I can always exercise my inspiration, free of any pressure. So here’s my. . .

Mission Statement — Honold-blog is to be authentic, to provide an outlet where I can freely practice self-expression, in any writing style, without constraints. Its vision is a readership who values substantive content as well as a creative voice not found on most blogs. The mission is to be unique by being true.

Payoff:

Voice — The thread that ties the blog together. It is a device by which I can move seamlessly between prose, commentary and observation, and memoir/personal writing. The other fluid element is story telling.

You may notice that I already have a tab marked “Prose”. (By the way, on my blog I will use the British rules for punctuation inside quotes, because they make more “sense”.) A piece under “Prose” will be more polished. The blog is more freewheelin’.

Poetry, prose, commentary (e.g. journalism), and memoir, are all flip sides of the same four-sided coin on any given topic. I could choose the topic of butterflies, for example, then decide any mix of those styles as a prism for expressing my thoughts.

Despite the number of “I’s” in this post, it’s not all about me.

Denouement: back to you—

What are you doing to self-actualize to be your true and unabashed self, in the face of the world around you? What are your constraints? Which of those constraints are breakable and which are not? Where can you eliminate time wasting and find more time for being your true self?

Take small steps. Maybe it’s something as simple as intentionally taking a 5-minute walk outside every day, to clear your mind and get you closer to your self. Maybe it’s speaking up for yourself once per day. Once you start, you may find this self-actualizing becomes a healthy addiction, and has a positive snowball effect.

Back to outer space.

The world is often called an oyster. Is it yours? Where’s the pearl?

The Pen and the Sword Hug it Out

I was on Pinterest yesterday when my mind was blown. I was looking up images for the old and divisive quote,

“The pen is mightier than the sword,”

when I found a picture of its author, with the full quote inscribed on top. I had never realized that the first “T” in that quote is lower-case. That’s only half the full sentence! Any argument about the validity of this quote is entirely off base, because it misses the words’ full meaning and context.

This is a great example of why arguments should be formed before they are made. These famous words have been touted as a token of wisdom and intellect for a long time ­– almost a couple centuries – and have been fervently contested and joked about by those who find it naïve. There are entire blog posts, alive with comments, about why it’s a dumb quote. A long list of spin-off quotes include:

 “The Pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue is mightier than them both put together.” –Marcus Garvy

“The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short and the pen is very sharp“ –Terry Pratchet

“The pen is mightier than the sword, if you shoot that pen out of a gun.“ –Stephen Colbert

“The pen isn’t mightier than the sword. Pens don’t win battles and swords don’t write poetry. Mighty is the hand that knows when to pick the pen and when to pick the sword.” –Anonymous (apparently. Hard to attribute this quote, but it’s all over the internet.)

 “Whoever said the pen is mightier than sword, obviously never encountered automatic weapons.”   –General Douglass MacArthur

MacArthur’s wisecrack is probably the most famous spin-off quote (or at least one with the best SEO). On one hand, he’s right. The person who said it died in 1873, so he probably saw some guns but never any automatic weapons. On the other hand, MacArthur’s words are only one interpretation (and they admit he didn’t know who authored the original quote). The opposing interpretation is that communication has more potential to change the world than violence does.

Okay, so here you go. [Drum roll!] The full quote debuted in 1839 in Richelieu, by the British playwright Edwin George Bulwer-Lytton, and it is this:

“Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.”

(Let’s update it to the 21st century to say “Under the rule of those entirely great…”) It’s not an absolute statement; it’s conditional! It means that in the right social and political times, the power of communication is greater than that of violence. Great leaders are those who can bring out this truth in the societies they preside over. Beneath the rule of not-so-great leaders (like tyrants), perhaps the sword becomes mightier than the pen (though there you may have an even stronger case for the pen as a tool for resistance).

It’s a relief to realize that this quote has always had more to it. I myself have wondered at the popular, incomplete version of the quote, It’s a nice notion… but really?

Moreover, I just think this is an interesting example of everyone getting their panties in a bunch about something taken out of context, that few people even really understand.

Now, does anybody want to go see Richelieu with me, so we can really get the full scoop?

Amazon Fires: a Tipping Point for the Conservation Conversation

The fires in the Amazon have fallen a bit on the popular news charts, but I thought I’d bring them back for a motivating, hopeful message at the unofficial start of the back-in-the-swing fall season. Just hang in there, I promise it gets hopeful and motivating, kind of. Here goes.

The Amazon rainforest is burning. The Amazon rainforest is on fire!!! I don’t know about you, but to me this is an unnerving turning point in the deterioration of our environment. In the course of my lifetime (almost 28 years), we’ve gone from “This is a horrible, yet reversable scenario,” to “We’re seeing the effects, but can still prevent the worst,” to “This is starting to get pretty bad.” We might add— “Uh oh, here comes hurricane season again. I hope no catastrophes happen,” or “Uh oh, here comes forest fire season again…” or “I’m afraid to eat seafood because of the microplastics,” or “The Amazon is going the way of coral reefs!”

But we should never give up.

Amazon Fires Recap — The destruction of the Amazon is a two-fold contribution to climate change. The jungle’s power to absorb carbon from the atmosphere is being depleted at the same time as massive amounts of carbon from burning trees (estimated 500 million tons by the end of 2019) are being emitted into atmosphere. Also, the destruction could be a tipping point for the rainforest itself, which may not be able to self-sustain as an ecosystem, gradually drying out and dying off. This in turn would be a tipping point for climate change across the planet, since the Amazon plays such an important role in processing the atmosphere’s carbon. People are to blame. The fires were started by farmers who had planned and named “fire day” – simultaneously clearing forest land for agriculture and reciprocating Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s call that the Amazon rainforest should be tapped for its economic potential. For two-and-a-half weeks, the media (Brazilian, US, or global) barely covered the story. Then after it became big news, and the G7 nations offered $20 million in aid to fight the fires, plus $12.2M from the UK, $11M from Canada, and $5M from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, plus some millions from online fund drives. In contrast, the fire of Notre Dame earlier this year garnered over $2 billion in a 48-hour period. Granted, people may be hesitant to donate for the Amazon fires, because it’s unclear where their money will go. Apparently much of the aid is allocated toward long term funding for Brazil’s EPA equivalent IBAMA and support for indigenous communities, which is well and good but not the immediate goal. Plus, the Brazilian government is historically so financially corrupt that people couldn’t be sure their money won’t go into the pockets of politicians. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro refused to accept the G7’s $20 million until French President Emmanuel Macron apologized for calling him “extraordinarily rude” (thus ironically proving Macron’s point). Thankfully, Bolsonaro seems to have softened his position and will now accept the aid, also giving the Brazilian military permission to fight the fires, but it’s chilling to think the fates of billions of people may rest on the ego of one dickhead politician. (Sound close to home?)

Anyway. As I was saying, we should never give up.

The silver lining to our crossing over into a more dire stage of the climate crisis is that climate denial is becoming more and more absurd. The influence of climate deniers is waning, and I’d like to point out how we may seize and accelerate the moment. Perhaps the greatest victory of climate “skeptics” has been to politicize this conversation, thus pushing it underground. To be clear, the very first climate deniers weren’t idiots. They were oil industry representatives, among the earliest to know for a fact that fossil fuel consumption would lead to global climate change. They deliberately lied to the public to create a fog around the issue and (here’s the kicker) politicize it. The narrative became that climate change was a socialist hoax meant to bring down the capitalist system that serves us so benevolently. All of a sudden, it became taboo and impolite to talk about climate change at all, especially in mixed company. This is the reality I grew up with. We are finally escaping a period of almost 40 years where people were afraid to talk about global warming in mixed company, because a political hullabaloo may erupt. BUT THIS IS NOT POLITICS – OUR PLANET IS DYING! 

The single best thing you can do, that everyone has the power to enact every day to turn the tide against climate destruction (besides going vegan), is to give a shit and talk about it. Don’t be afraid to bring up how the weather isn’t behaving like it used to (ask, “Why was there no snow last winter in New Jersey?”). Don’t be afraid to use the words “global warming” or “climate change.” Even though acceptance of the issue is more widespread, it still feels awkward at first to breach the conversation with these words. It still may feel “uncool” to care about this subject. But do not succumb to this contrived social pressure – we all need to care about this, right now, as much as possible.

Another conversation to breech is around the plastic problem. The plastic crisis and the greenhouse gas crisis are evil twins. Showing awareness for one shows awareness for both. I remember growing up, I learned how to sort recycling from trash. This was my entry point into caring about environmental concerns. When I started as a child, I didn’t even know why I was recycling, but by the time I got to high school, I couldn’t throw a plastic bottle in the garbage bin without cringing because it didn’t go in the recycling bin. That recycling awareness led to climate awareness.

Do you remember that commercial where all those New Yorkers stop in disbelief of some trash right next a trash can, and then one guy just walks by, picks it up, and throws it away. Well it made an impression on me. Now I make Instagram posts with the hashtag #onepieceatatime where I do the same thing, except usually I’m out on a walk or at the playground with my daughter Olivia. Look around you; plastic litter is everywhere, ridiculously easy to find, left by people who don’t care. Again, I’m trying to do my part, but I’m also trying to spread awareness. This begins by people giving a shit and talking about it. Thus we fight the battle against those who don't care. Be bold. Pick up a piece of trash (or two or three or 20 pieces) off the ground and put it in the nearest trash can. Don’t be afraid to post that action on Instagram and hashtag it #onepieceatatime and while you’re at it, tag me (@Matty_Honz). 

While there are many easy ways to reduce your carbon footprint, and it is obviously extremely important to do so, addressing the plastic issue is often a more attainable and immediately gratifying way to begin caring about conservation. Carbon emissions are impossible to see immediately, but look around any stretch of ground and there’s plastic everywhere! Start to pick it up and throw it away. Use a reusable coffee mug, reusable containers instead of Ziploc bags, reusable shopping bags, and do so boldly. Then talk about it and post about it. The underlying message is that others have permission to do the same.

The bigger the conversation, the greater the pressure to act on saving our environment. There is no reason that we shouldn’t have extremely efficient cars, widespread renewable energy, and way less single-use plastic in the world. But we still have these things, because oil companies, car companies, power produces, grocery packagers, etc. by-and-large don’t care. That is, they care about money, not about the environment or the consequences of their actions. However, they do respond to consumer demands, and if we all start talking about it, caring, and insisting on responsibility (not just a fringe few, but everybody), we are creating demand and then companies will start to change their ways.

There are still so many people in this world who just don’t care, and it’s not all their fault – it’s in the culture. But now, with information available, it’s everyone’s responsibility. How many times I’ve been at the drug store, buying a single item, and the cashier starts to put it in a single-use plastic bag. I say, “I’m fine without a bag. I try to reduce those,” but in my head I’m screaming, Why would you ever think I need that plastic bag for this stick of deodorant that fits in my pocket?!? That’s crazy! Of course, if you have a position of influence in a company, you can make an even bigger difference. Don’t let the selfish politicians and the industry propagandists win. Be vocal.

The Amazon Fire Stick TV service should probably change its name. And then Jeff Bezos and his company can give $5 billion (no sweat off their backs) to restore the Amazon rainforest. Just think of the marketing and branding possibilities of Amazon (the company) rescuing its name sake! Well, even though it’s entirely within the realm of possibility and great for brands, hugely profitable companies with the resources to change the world for the better do not meet their potential to do so. But, alas, that’s a story for another post.

"Perfessional" Pursuits

One week later and my first blog post has been old news for almost as long. It took Michelangelo 2 years to sculpt the David.

I sat down to write this second post—timer set for 5’15”—and did a free write. Then I wrote a rough draft—timer at 30’ 15”. Next time I’ll add more timers: a step in between—timer at 7’ 30”—to write a bullet point outline; and an hour-long timer at the end to edit the rough draft into a final draft. (This one has taken a bit longer to edit.)

The objective of this blog as a whole is to advance both my personal and professional journeys. It is a privilege to be able treat these two journeys largely as one. This is the top of Maslow’s pyramid.

I’m a writer. From clever short stories in 3rd grade, to a presented poem in 12th grade that brought down the house, to my major in college, and all points between and beyond, I’ve always been.

I’ve done a lot of professional writing, mostly via nonprofit grant proposals. Since I’ve primarily worked in education, I’ve never fully immersed myself in professional writing or published much of my creative work. Michelangelo was 26 when he was commissioned to sculpt David. I’m almost 28, but then again everyone’s a late bloomer these days.

I’m just starting on my masterpiece. As I said, the objective of this blog is to advance my personal and professional journey. A requisite of both is to get my writing out in the world. I’m currently searching for jobs around the blooming field of “Content Marketing,” which is writing meant to engage discourse with a target audience. Marketing is creative, therefore this is a great blend of personal and professional interests for me.

Let’s call this balance between the personal and the professional “perfessional pursuits.” This is something we can all aspire toward. How are you achieving your perfessional goals?

I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned so far in the past couple weeks of my perfessional journey. I’ll start at the professional and segue to the personal. (And I was trying to avoid another list…)

1) The World of Writing – Publications are alive and well, but they’ve gotten lean and moved online. I’ve begun to dig. There is a rich and endless world of writing to discover. Medium.com (an innovative blogging site) and Morning Brew (an email news brief) are two good examples I’ve found. There are countless more. The goal is to get a quick, clickable buzz across inboxes and news feeds. Done right, there is money in this method. Yet all this word surfing has made me crave the real thing. I just subscribed to the New Yorker. There is something in paper literature, a part of our cultural soul, that can’t be replaced. Let alone books on shelves gathering dust. (I mean… don’t let them alone. Pick one up and read it.)

2) You Can Learn Anything Online – Remember how Neo and Trinity ask Tank to download skills into their brains? While we’re still catching up to the technology in The Matrix, we have YouTube. I’m currently learning marketing through YouTube videos and another online course. Sure, it’s not the same as college or a Master’s, but online learning can be a bridge to real world experience, which is where the true learning happens anyway.

3) The Process – is key. To master a skill, we need rituals and practice. Say you and a friend challenge each other: who can paint the better picture in a month? You spend the whole month on one painting. Your friend paints a new picture every day and submits her final painting to your little competition. Whose is better?

Nail down the process! Rinse and repeat. With a family this is even more important, because personal time is family time, which cannot be traded willy-nilly for professional time.

4) Perfessional Goals – We’ve all heard “Love what you do and you won’t work a day in your life.” Most of us have to be a more realistic, but this is a nice ideal to strive for. I chose writing because I love to learn, and writing necessitates reading and learning. I also love being creative. If I don’t work in a field with some creativity, either my mind will explode like a scuba diving balloon or my soul will shrivel up like a flower. What is this thing for you personally, and are you keeping it somehow with you professionally?           

5) Self-expression – This has long been the missing piece in my life. I’ve been creative since before I knew what the word meant, but I suppressed a lot of creativity due to internal fears. Even more than writing, I’ve love music. I am a fine musician and have worked with music for several years now. But on the creative side, I have never matched my reality to my dreams. I used to have regrets about that, but if I had pursued music my life would be very different, and I may have never met my beautiful wife Natália and our amazing daughter Olivia, whom I would not trade for the world. That said, here I declare my dedication to self-expression. Stay tuned for more of it! 

In conclusion, I believe it’s about self-love and confidence. I choose writing because it involves creativity and learning; marketing is the professional field where that skill fits. You have to love yourself to know yourself and then give yourself permission to dig into your soul and find the thing that makes you you! Then you must be confident about it. Confidence is a form of intelligence and a form of aptitude. If you love to do something, you’re probably good at it, and you should have the confidence to say, I’m damn good at this this, one of the best in fact, and no one can do it quite like I do, because I’m me. Now I’m gonna take this thing that I love and kick ass, and I’m gonna make some $$$.

Working on it.

The Great Grain-of-Salt: A Response to Netflix’s The Great Hack

I recently watched the new Netflix documentary, The Great Hack, and found it edifying. The film is a crusade for truth, dissecting Cambridge Analytica’s sophisticated propaganda machine. They syphoned people’s data on a massive scale, crafted targeted propaganda, and deployed it to influence political outcomes, such as the election of Donald Trump, Brexit, and probably several more in less developed countries, before their game was big news.

But how can we know if The Great Hack is to be trusted? Maybe it contains misinformation itself. It’s certain to have its own angle, leaving out other information and perspectives. Don’t get me wrong – I’m inclined to trust this film and I enjoyed it. But one of its major points is how easily minds can be manipulated by digital media, and well… I streamed this movie on Netflix. So it got me thinking.

The key detail that sparked this post was a meeting between the main protagonist, Brittany Kaiser, and Julian Assange in February 2017. The meeting was alleged, by an article in the Guardian, to have been about the 2016 US election. Kaiser says the interaction had nothing to do with the election. Both sources look believable at face value, especially given the Guardian’s solid reputation. I more so believe Kaiser because of item #3 below (she seems honest) and because the Guardian article’s evidence is all hear-say, but it’s impossible to know for sure which is true. It can’t be both.

This is our present dilemma. Human beings have probably been lying since we developed language, but misinformation is especially tricky in the digital age. We have to keep some personal tools for truth seeking. Let’s call it the “grain-of-salt toolkit”. Here are some items you might include:

            1) Doubt – Never accept information blindly. Every bit will tell you something, just by the fact that someone put it out there. Nothing can be pure universal truth, given human error and unavoidable subjectivity.

            2) Self-awareness – We are more likely to “hear” information that confirms our existing narratives and dismiss those that contradict it. Most of us have heard this, but what do we do about it? If we learn something counter to our existing knowledge and beliefs, compare the two side-by-side. Use common sense. Maybe the result falls in the middle. Maybe we can accept that someone else’s truth is not the same as our own.

            3) People-reading skills – This TED Talk, “How To Spot A Liar,” is insightful. Watching The Great Hack, it helped me disbelieve Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to congress and believe Brittany Kaiser’s reaction to it.

            4) Media-reading skills – Know your source. “Main stream” is a double edge sword. The main-stream neglect many worthy stories (like this one) in favor of lazy bickering on “sensational” topics, but the spotlight subjects them to accountability. In our 2.0 world, this is also true for most small publications that aren’t skewed politically. Social media posts are rarely accountable to anybody.

            5) Trust in real experiences – The things that can be considered 100% true are those that you can experience and understand with all six senses, like a walk through nature or an observation of the desk you’re sitting at and how it’s made (check out Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). Anything projected by human beings onto a medium does not fit this definition. (Art is a gray area, as always.) It’s important for us to unplug every now and then and get in touch with what is really real. Leave your phone behind sometimes. Suggest a no-phones rule at a dinner party.

Do you have another tool you’d like to add to the grain-of-salt toolkit? Please mention it in the comments.

In any case, I’m not trying to make anyone paranoid. Most media outlets are still accountable and trustworthy, and it’s mainly the fringe social media posts we have to be wary of. Keep consuming news and culture, and stay informed. Just do so through the prism of your grain of salt, and be aware you’re always building and re-building your own world view.