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The Straight Line is Godless

October 31, 2012 //
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I used to call my consultancy Postoneforty. I had a Facebook page called that. Now it’s called #messythink, named after — you guessed it — this blog. You can visit it at https://www.facebook.com/messythink.

Why the change?

For one, #messythink is more who I am. Postoneforty, and the idea behind it, well, that’s me too. But anyone who really knows the real Dave knows that, well, I think messy.

Messily.

No, messy. Messy.

This isn’t to say that my way is better or worse. It’s just my way. I take the long way around sometimes, but maybe I like the long way. And, more to the point, maybe the long way is better. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Business, Media, Thought, Writing

Messythink [#30posts]

September 17, 2012 //
0

I’m a messy thinker. I like it that way. I renamed this blog #messythink because that’s how I operate, and I’m pretty comfortable with that.

What I don’t  like is that my messy thinking doesn’t always work with others. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying everyone should conform to how I do things. I guess I just wish there was a better compromise than the one I always get stuck with.

Supposedly, thinking differently is praised in our culture, and not just given Apple’s iconic bit of sloganeering. We hear this stuff all the time, how what’s in short supply is some otherness in one’s thinking process. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories #30posts, Advertising and Marketing, Business, Media, Thought, Writing

Things We Accept, Deserve, and Make Do With [#30posts]

September 11, 2012 //
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Like I was saying yesterday, there’s a certain power to a coming-of-age narrative. Doesn’t matter if it’s The Catcher in the Rye or The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Everyone was young, everyone remembers how it feels, everyone kind of wishes they could go back and do it again. As isolating, dysfunctional, shaky and generally miserable as my formative and teenage years were, I’d redo them in a heartbeat — and I think you would too. Face it: whatever else they were, those years were exciting and full of discovery. At times they were confusing and isolating, but those things built character. Besides, can you honestly say that you feel less confused and isolated as a grown-up? I know I can’t. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories #30posts, Business, Media, Thought, Writing

Better

June 8, 2012 //
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Bigger better faster stronger. When I’m teaching I’ll often make fun of this idea because a) it’s not an idea, and b) it only gets embraced as an idea by people who wouldn’t know a good idea if it came up to them and introduced itself.

I make fun of “bigger better faster stronger”-type thinking because it’s so very (North) American; it pre-supposes that more is better. It does so by way of crafting seemingly sensible truisms: Bigger is bigger than smaller; faster is faster than slower; stronger is stronger than weaker. The “better” is the glue that holds this somewhat silly premise together. Because the word “better” is in there, some erroneously believe that this notion makes sense. Except it doesn’t.

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Categories Advertising and Marketing, Business, Media, Strategy

A Line in the Sand

June 6, 2012 //
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Many people who blog don’t know what they should write about, so they write about a bunch of stuff. I am definitely guilty of that (though I’m not sure if “guilty” is the right word). Since I built this little portal, I’ve blogged about (among other things) racism, failure, writing, and my thoughts on aggregation. I think to an extent I was okay with writing about nothing in particular/whatever was on my mind because I was actually enjoying writing again.

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Categories Advertising and Marketing, Media, Teaching, Writing

Say ‘why’ again. I dare you. I double dare you…

May 21, 2012 //
1

I was talking to one of my classes at George Brown the other day, and I said something I used to say to the Grade 6, 7 and 8 classes I taught last year. I said that “why?” was the interesting question. All the other simple question words — who, what, where, when and how — are interesting, but the only one that really matters is the why. If you want to know the most interesting thing about, well, anything, you need the why; while it may be perfect and acceptable that someone loves you, knowing why somehow makes that most bestest of things even betterer.

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Categories Media, Writing
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