My most recent piece for Forbes, why advertisers are pulling out of "Dating Naked":
"The recent ad removal was inspired by the Parents Television Council, which describes itself as 'A non-partisan educational organization advocating responsible entertainment,' but exists primarily to rid television programming of seemingly unseemly content."
Watching a Muay Thai class after mine today, it occurred to me that sometimes it's not about what you do do, but what you don't do. The best guy in the class had a lot of don'ts. He didn't have a conditioning problem. He didn't lose focus. He didn't deviate from his intensity. He didn't wait a second to start the next thing. He didn't half-ass what he did. He didn't have an attitude. He didn't squander himself. Unburdened, he was the best.
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“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well -- better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words -- in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
-- George Orwell, 1984
Image via How Creatives Work
Today I was doing some work on the work front: sending out resumes, querying ad firms about copywriting opportunities, sniffing about for freelance writing gigs. I ended up reading some old posts on my Forbes blog, which I wrote after I got downsized. They were mostly about freelancing, and they were really interesting. This one stuck out particularly: "How to Lose Your Job and Not Have a Nervous Breakdown."
I was downsized over the phone. I hung up the phone, then sat on the edge of my bed and examined the floor. I considered that I had not expected things would turn out this way. Yet, they had. Am I going to have another nervous breakdown? I asked myself. I was not. Now, when new challenges arise, I remind myself, At least it’s not a nervous breakdown.
I took this photo at a porn convention in Chicago four years ago.
Today I'm celebrating four years cancer-free! Yes, four years ago today, my oncologist said, "You're cancer-free," and then he kicked me out of his office. It was a great day.
Join me in celebrating by buying a copy of my cancer-inspired short story, "The Tumor."
THE TUMOR is a slipstream short story starring an anthropomorphic tumor, a killer husband, and an invisible woman. Based on the author's true life experience with cancer (she's fine now!), this terrifying tale will grab you by the balls and make you scream.
I finally had the opportunity to watch "Into the Wild." I guess maybe I was avoiding it. Why would I watch a movie about someone stupid enough to wander into the Alaskan wilds and die from starvation? Help comes from the filmmakers, who happily distort the true story of Chris McCandless into something far more inspirational. A kind of walkabout that makes appealing the idea of renouncing civilization. Instead of becoming some Jesus-like figure, McCandless turns into a walking manifestation of the American spirit: floating from hippie commune to Midwestern fields to the snowy tundra. I suppose the point is not how or why he went into the wild. But that he did at all. Sure, he died because he ... ate something poisonous? ... misread his field guide? ... consumed too many rabbits? At least he went. Most of us, let's face it, never do.
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I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test. I am an INFP. That sounds about right.
1. Breathing
2. Remembering the combinations (jab, cross, hook, what?)
3. Holding the pads for the other woman who is trying to kick them
4. Pushups
5. Not sweating
6. Keeping my hands near my chin so I don't get clocked
7. Throwing a punch/kick and putting my hips into it
8. Picking up the really heavy weight balls while wearing boxing gloves
9. Putting on my wraps so they don't fall off in the middle of class
10. Splits
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I wrote this
Last Friday, I put together a copywriting portfolio that I can send to prospect hires. It's called "10 Reasons You Should Hire Me." I think the strongest part is the video referral from the Old Spice Guy.
You can read Forbes Blog Monthly Stats #1 here.
The month of June was a real fail whale of a month for my Forbes blog. In May, my total monthly visitors was 98,340. In June, it was 62,925. Shakira's hips don't lie, and neither do those numbers. What went wrong? Let's discuss.
In my last post, I wrote: "In June, I'm aiming to post five times a week, as a way of building my traffic." Instead of doing so, I posted a grand total of seven times out of a possible twenty-two times. Simply put, when the initial posts I wrote didn't "pop," traffic-wise, I got frustrated and wandered off in another direction. Another reason this didn't "work" is that "quality over quantity" is probably the better mantra here, not "quantity over quality." Most of the posts I wrote got crap traffic. The one that got the most traffic was one about Trophy Wife Barbie, which was fun to do.
Of course, one can always look for things to blame. Blogging is slower in the summer! My mojo was off! I was too busy working on my book proposal! And yet when one blogs, one has no one to blame but oneself, and so I shall bear the burden of my blogging failure.
Image via Ironing Board Collective
A couple days ago, I put together a short list of five posts that I thought could do well traffic-wise. More "interesting ideas" than "churn and burn." The first of those posts will run next week. I think it will be a good one.
Let's hope for a better performance in July.
Final monthly stats:
Pageviews: 80,648
Total Monthly Visitors: 62,925
One-time Visitors: 60,673
Repeat Visitors: 2,252
Comments: 18
Posts: 7
Current Recency Score: for some reason my recency score isn't appearing on my dashboard
So come back next month and see if I can get quality over quantity to get this thing going again.
Image via Etsy
Image via MAHQ
1. My upper body strength is hell.
2. I do better when I try and kick the boxing head gear off the top of the stand than when I'm trying to kick the air.
3. Those walking lunges are tiring.
4. I have about 25 minutes of go before I think: Oh, no.
5. I really, really like it, mostly because it's physically and mentally challenging.
6. My hips are tight.
7. Most of the other people at the gym are men. But not all of them.
8. If I go to ladies kickboxing class on Thursday night, I will get better faster.
9. Boxing is fun!
10. Working up a good sweat is a good thing.
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I planted these pots this weekend. I went to Home Depot, and I asked the plant expert what to get, and I picked out five plants and five pots. I also got some potting soil and some Miracle-Gro. At home, I put some dirt in the pots, and then the plants in the pots, and then some more dirt around the plants in the pots. Then I walked around for a while and decided where I wanted to put them. Then I watered the plants in the pots. I got dirt everywhere, including on my knees, but my husband vacuumed it up for me. After that, it rained.
I wrote kind of a fun post about what strippers can learn from CEOs on my Forbes blog:
She steps out from behind the curtain. She’s wearing a black bra and black panties, and that’s it (unless you count the towering heels upon which she’s balancing). At the other end of the stage, a dozen white males are waiting for her. One of them has stuffed several George Washingtons into the waistband of his pants, to which he is pointing.
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I've taken up Muai Thai boxing and really love it. Here's why.
It's all about aggression
I think as a woman sometimes it's not OK to be aggressive. Even if you're six-foot-plus. Or maybe especially if you're six-foot-plus. In a way, Muay Thai boxing is all about aggression. But it's not about being angry. It's about focusing intensity for maximum effect.
It's a great workout
My sit-ups and jumping jacks aren't too bad, but, my god, my pushups are an exercise in humiliation. Apparently, I have no upper body strength. Muay Thai boxing is great for being long and lean, for losing fat, and for building muscle. All good things.
It's fun
I would probably be at a total loss if I hadn't done karate several decades ago. Because I did, I get some of the basics. And I'm not too twitchy about striking someone. At the same time, there are some things I learned that I'm now having to unlearn. That's the hard part.
