An Editor's Journal

Came across this while reading What the Dog Saw this morning. It’s so great I just had to share it. 

Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head — even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not a place you’d really like to be. 

See? Told you it was great. 

I read not to be persuaded, necessarily, but to open my mind to what else is out there. To discover how other people think. How boring is it to read only about stuff you totally agree with? 

-JA 

I was struck by this quote from a recent Fast Company article: 

When companies like Pinterest and Instagram become successes overnight, our expectations for what brands can or can’t do become unhinged from reality.

While I like the basic tenant of the quote - that companies/brands/individuals have lost patience in our fast-paced digital world - I wonder how true the “overnight success” part really is. 

When you think of companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, perhaps it only seems like their growth happened overnight. Mark Zuckerberg spent his whole life coding and programming, and was therefore able to create The Facebook literally overnight. Countless hours were spent in unknowing preparation for what Facebook would become. I am sure the same is true of Instagram and Pinterest. 

The reality is that no success happens with pure luck, even though it may seem like it. Someone, somewhere, has put in thousands of hours of work that eventually led to some “overnight success”. So perhaps our issue is not one of patience, but of misunderstanding what hard work really is.

It’s our perspective that has been skewed, not necessarily just our patience.

What do you think?

-JA

Came across this whole Sarah J. Phillips debacle yesterday, and was sucked into reading everything I could find about it. The whole thing reads like a freakin mystery novel, and even kind of falls into that Catfish vein. 

The short of it: A 22-year-old freelance ESPN writer was duping the world and scamming online readers/writers/creators. This just came out into the open a couple days ago, and I’ve aggregated the articles as best as I can here for you. I did this because I had a hard time finding all the stuff and thought how it’d be nice to just aggregate it into once piece. 

I know it’s a lot of reading, but I’ve never seen anything like it. Again, this is easily of the most fascinating media and journalism-related stories I’ve ever read. 

So here it is in somewhat chronological order: 

• The original investigative report - here. 
• Sarah Phillips takes to Twitter, with bits and pieces of a confession - here.  
• Take a look at her Twitter account - here. 
• One guy’s first hand experience with Phillips trying to scam him - here. 
• A couple more scamming victims come out - here. 
• Yet another scamming victim gives his side of the story - here. 
• ESPN fires Phillips as the story comes out - here. 
• Turns out Phillips also acquired some of the most popular parody Twitter accounts on the web through illegal means - here. 
• A bit more history comes out about Phillips and her partner in the scam - here.  
• Phillips partner in crime emerges as the real puppet master - here. 
• This story has wider media ramifications, as detailed in the Huff Post - here.

I got this book for free as part of “Blogging for Books” program. I honestly didn’t think it would be very good. I judged it by its cover and and I’m always wary of things that say “30 days to a better [insert anything]”. 

I was incredibly surprised when I cracked it open and gained oodles of knowledge and insight. It is geared towards being a book on marriage, but also claims that it speaks to any relationship in your life - which is definitely true. 

I would really recommend this book to anyone looking to strengthen the relationships closest to them. 

A few highlights after just a few chapters: 

• The adventure of a lifetime is right in front of us - cleverly disguised as familiar faces. 
• Every relationship has the potential to be better the next time we’re together. 
• “We are as we love. It is love that measures our stature.” -William S. Coffin 
• The greatest gift you can give is your presence. 
• The number one problem in relationships is that they usually take place at arm’s length. 
• We’ve been led to believe relationships could come to us. We receive notifications throughout the day from our phone, email, social media, etc. As a result, we develop the expectation that relationships ought to be convenient and easy. 
• Just the effort it takes to physically show up in someone’s life speaks volumes. 
• We all long to know we’re worth someone’s total attention. 
• “Wherever you are, be all there.” 
• The truth is that “being all there” isn’t very efficient, but it’s crucial to the success of human relationships. 

Many of these fly in the face of our social/digital world.

Be challenged by it.

Let it change the way you interact with people.

-JA

My coworkers will probably laugh at me for this post, but hopefully they’ll bear with me. I’m discovering in the last few days that there are two types of losing. The difference may seem small, but it’s actually quite a large gap - and makes a big difference in how you feel about losing. 

The first way to lose is when you’ve clearly made mistakes and haven’t played your absolute best. This kind of losing isn’t all that hard to put up with, because you can clearly see that had you made all the right plays, you would have won - whether it be office ping-pong or after-hours racquetball (my two personal favorites).

The second type is much harder to deal with. This is the kind of losing where you do play your best, and you do make all the plays you are supposed to, and you still lose. This type of losing actually makes me much angrier, because I know there is absolutely nothing I could have done to win. It’s actually a little depressing. 

Here is what it teaches me though: One of the hardest and greatest lessons we can learn is how to lose gracefully. As I said, I’m only really learning this the last few days, so I don’t quite know how to do it yet, but I’ll get there. 

For some reason I’ve been stuck with this attitude that if I did my best, I would win at anything I tried. The reality is that this just isn’t true. There are people around me that are just better than me at certain things. 

This attitude is certainly a character flaw, but one that doesn’t come out until you actually start to lose - even if it is something as seemingly insignificant as racquetball with coworkers. 

Jesus teaches me to be humble in all things, to never consider myself better than others, and to be filled with grace.

Here’s to taking that to heart this week. 

-JA 

I’m reading a phenomenal book called Hellhound On His Trail. It’s the story of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. As a religion major in college, I read a lot of Dr. King’s own writings, but surprisingly not too much about his life. 

One of the things I love most about the book is seeing the way people described Dr. King and what it was like to be with him. There is one particular telling that I hope can someday describe my own life. 

This is from a young man who was part of The Invaders - a Black Power group in Memphis made up of mostly teenage and twenty-something men. Let’s just say this group wasn’t overly fond of the non-violence stance of Dr. King. 

King and this young man were talking about a peaceful rally that went horribly wrong and started some riots in Memphis. Many people blamed The Invaders for inciting the unrest. So, this fella wanted to come clear the air, and had a chat with King. 

This is what he said about the experience:

“When he came into the room it seemed like all of a sudden there was a real rush of wind and calm settled over everything. You could feel peace around that man. He looked like peace.“ 

Like I said, I want my life to be known like this. I want people to describe experiences with me in this way. And I’m a ways off, but it is something I will strive for. 

How about you? Do you want to be known as a person who looks like peace?

-JA