32. Listen Carefully, advice for Marketers antd Bloggers alike

Sometimes being a muse is not everything

32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

Blogging, it turns out, is a pastime fraught with peril.

As the reader is probably aware, this blog was born of a unique blend of boredom, frustration and too much time. Like many things I’ve started, it was a relatively an ill-considered venture, probably begun in the early hours of dawn and possibly whilst under the influence of a pre-hangover high.

Since the birth of my blog, and amidst a tight-knit pack of devoted readers (Kirsty, I know you’re reading this), I had an attack of Blogger’s Block.

For those of you who have not yet fallen prey to the promise of a free blog account, Blogger’s Block is what happens when you think you have something to say, then find out you don’t have enough time to say it.

In my case, Blogger’s block, was exasperated by the birth of a business and the vacuum it created in all the free time left over from toddler-wrangling and devoted wife-ing *cough cough*.

So what brings me back, you might ask?

In this case it’s a unique blend of stimuli. You see, in the intervening months, my blogging career hasn’t just gone cold. Rather, I’ve taken a more behind-the-scenes role in the world of blogging. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve actually been hard at work in another accidental blogging adventure, Secrets of Fatherhood.

Amid a heavy-handed dab of artistic license, readers of Secrets of Fatherhood may recognise my cameo appearances on couches, in birthing stories and some of the more excited fantasies of the blog’s blogger (who at this point still refuses the title of author or writer).

Once the novelty of having my life blogged again wore off, the reality of such fame set in. Minor inconsistencies in my new, online character began to appear. I noticed that my new online persona had been using my iPhone for explicit photos, and seemed to be caught in some altered reality, pre-, mid and post-baby bearing.

So finally, one morning at 3am, the misgivings of a muse woke me.

I lay pondering the eleven unwritten (Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth totals 43 statements) blogs in my writing future.

Then it hit me: 32 – Listen Carefully. Which is the very thing I’ve been doing since I last blogged. The very thing my marketing clients pay me for.

To listen.

Very Carefully.

Because what you hear, is not often what you expect to hear.

After several months of listening, it seems I have my blogging mojo back. Thank you, Bruce.