One of the unsaid promises of social media is: you can be famous. If you get enough followers, fans, likes, retweets, then you can make your book, blog, movie, band, idea – go. So we focus on making big enough tribes, creating big enough platforms, so our idea will fly. We delve into:

Twitter – Facebook – Instagram – Pinterest – YouTube – MySpace – LinkedIn – Jumbalaya – Vimeo – Google Plus – WordPress – OmniCron – Tumblr

We work hard on our personal brand.
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I was six when I first met Tom.

Before Tom, the only man I was around was my little league baseball coach. Coach Castle drove an old beater Jeep Cherokee. It had wood paneling and smelled like stale pipe smoke. Sometimes after practice, Coach Castle drove us to Terri’s Hot Dog Stand and bought us fried cherry pies. Coach didn’t talk much. So I just watched him. Squinting. Like I was looking at a lunar eclipse. Men were an anomaly. They rarely came around. Men were elusive creatures, like Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.

Tom came to our door with a crooked smile and a busty mustache, back when they were cool. I wasn’t sure what to think of him. But the first time we hung out, Tom took me to Baskin Robins and bought me a double scoop of chocolate. I remember it dripping down my fingers onto the table. But it didn’t matter – I had a new friend [...]

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.” -Poet John Dryden

I heard a story about a man named Eugene Pauly – E.P. Because of permanent brain damage, E.P. has no short-term memory. He doesn’t know where his own kitchen is. When you ask him, he just shrugs. But twenty minutes later, he gets off the couch and gets a drink from the refrigerator. He can’t explain it. E.P. takes a daily walk around the neighborhood – and when asked which house is his, he doesn’t know. However, when he gets to his driveway, he always finds the right house and goes inside.

Why? According to research from Duke University, more than 40% of our…

“I never exactly made a book. It was rather like taking dictation” -CS Lewis

The first place I go to write is not my Mac. Or my typewriter. Or the yellow-lined notepad. I go somewhere else entirely. And I’m not exactly sure how to get there.

Other authors go there too. Philip Yancey says he only finds this place after he’s been alone in a cabin for a week, without shaving. Bob Goff puts on his Indiana Jones hat and goes excavating for buried treasure. Anne LaMott calls it…

After weeks of wandering in the gloomy forest, the hikers grew depressed. Fall was coming and they were lost. They trudged along; dragging their heavy feet through the dead leaves carpeting the forest. Everywhere they looked, they only saw massive trees – ‘endless lines of straight gray trunks like the pillars of some huge twilight hall.’ They were ready to quit. Finally, in frustration, the leader shouted,

Is there no end to this accursed forest? Someone must…