The last few weeks have been a lot.
I usually try not to talk too much about work here, since this is my space away from that. But when I went back to the job that rescued me from my unemployment back in 2018, I ended up becoming the manager of a little team of writers—which means that things usually end up being a little heavier than they used to.
Usually, this time of year does get a little crazy, because part of being a manager is that I’m responsible for planning out what my team does for the next year. Last year wasn’t so bad, but combined with the fact that I volunteered as tribute a few months ago to test out a new project management system, this year’s has been pretty intense.
Long story short, I got frustrated with writers just being assembly line workers and wanted us to do creative things—and someone’s gotta keep the creative things on track.
It’s been going well, but it does mean that this year’s annual planning was a lot more involved and intensive.
And that’s left me pretty zapped.
Ordinarily, this is the time of year is when I’d be happily figuring out what I want to do with my blog for the next 12 months, too.
But in the spirit of full disclosure, well, I often joke with Sekan in a very dark-humour way that writers sometimes need a little mental lubricant for their best work to happen, and that’s what it took for me to do more than stare at about six different articles of blog post ideas with a blank look that would do a goldfish proud.
I’ve made a little progress, and I am excited to start working on some new things, but I might need a good solid nap first!
The good news is, it’s inspired me too.
Yeah, my brain has been quite the paradox lately. It’s fun. But as part of the Big Annual Planning, I ended up on the idea of traditional rhetoric in the style of Aristotle, particularly persuasive rhetoric.
The technical terms for it are Greek words, from what I understand—ethos, logos, and pathos. And though I know I’ll butcher this and I just hope the one on my team who’s taught this and knows better will someday forgive me, the essential ideas are that of brand authority, logic, and emotion.
Of course, they’re not always that direct; for example, emotion can be things like comedic stories, things that tug at your heartstrings, ideas that inspire you to do something new. And though they’re definitely much more directly applicable to marketing, I’ve been trying to think about how I could use them to have a little more fun with the writing I do here, too.
That’s the end of my ramble for today; I know it wasn’t much, but I tend to think it’s only fair to share when there’s big stuff going on.
YOUR TURN
