“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” — Plutarch

I recently read some repulsive advice in a post on “content marketing.”

It was a great reminder of why I rarely read advice posts about content marketing.

Which puts me in a rather weird conversation position with many people in my industry (heck, it probably makes you wonder what the heck I’m doing writing about written content and what the heck you are doing reading it … and that’s just a lot of hecks!).

There’s a reason I put such a silly amount…

“What motivates some people will not motivate others, a fact that provides all the more reason to understand the needs of your particular target audience.” ― Nir Eyal, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

If I were to tell you that 98–99% of all humanity lives on land somewhere, do you think that would be correct?

“Of course” you’d reply, wondering a bit why I’m asking such a foolish question.

In fact, you’re probably trying to suss out where I’m going with this.

It’ll all make sense in a minute or two.

So let’s go back to these land-dwellers.

Excluding…

Let’s travel back in time — and yes, get away from 2020 for a while. In October of 2019, another round of Nobel Prize winners were announced.

Weirdly, I’m not writing today about one of the writing categories (though, man, were there some scandals there!)

Instead, it’s about the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and one of the winners: Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, a professor at Oxford University.

It seems Sir Peter and his collaborators have discovered and verified how cells can sense and adapt to changing oxygen availability. …

As a writer, world traveler, and overall lover of civilizations and cultures, I am fascinated by this bar chart gif. It shows the 10 most populated cities in the world, from the year 1500 to 2018:

Remember when it used to be OK to like things?

You’d read a book, see a movie, try a new dish … and tell everyone about it.

With glee.

I’m sure many of you can identify with this cartoon from Sarah’s Scribbles:

It’s hard to know what to say these days.

Heck, it’s hard for most of us to know how to feel.

So it is no surprise that our normal ways of communicating are being tested, much like all the “normal ways” of life B.Co. (Before Coronavirus/COVID-19).

One of those normal ways of communicating is the passing greeting and salutations we send, often without thinking, in emails and texts.

I did this recently, popping off an email to an acquaintance, ending with my regular “Hope all is good in your world!” commentary. The statement made me pause.

How would such a…

Remember how you used to be able to ask someone for a Google Document they had created, and when they sent it, you could share it with the relevant people in your organization through permissions?

It is a difficult time to be a human in the world right now.

Not insurmountable, but there are challenges. Aside from a sweeping global pandemic virus that currently has no cure, there is the social distancing and isolation, abrupt changes to schedules and lifestyles, fear for health and financial futures, worry about family and friends … the list goes on and on and could really be an entire piece in and of itself.

But you know the circumstances of your current existence, and probably don’t need me rehashing them for your mind to start spinning on.

Instead, we’re going…