Steve Skojec
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Posts by Steve Skojec
Book Review: Wild Thing by Josh Bazell
May 10th
Does this hurt your eyes? Well it should.
I am not, by nature, a reader of pulp fiction. I’m a science fiction junkie, and though that genre sometimes veers into pulp territory, it rarely has the crime noir association that winds up in a Tarantino film or a Frank Miller graphic novel.
But I do like to mix things up now and then, and when I came across Josh Bazell’s debut novel Beat the Reaper last summer, I found myself compelled to give it a spin. I was not disappointed. In fact, I’d say that Beat the Reaper was my hands-down favorite book last year, and it was up against some strong contenders (like my first runner-up, Ready Player One.) Beat the Reaper is, in a nutshell, brilliant and highly entertaining. It’s a kinetic story that checks every box you want on an absolute page-turner that you can’t put down. Since it’s the set up for the book I’m about to review, I’ll briefly recap: the story opens with the mugging of the main character, Dr. Peter Brown (né Pietro Brnwa) and it doesn’t go according to plan.
Even at five in the morning, I’m not the kind of guy you mug. I look like an Easter Island sculpture of a longshoreman. But the fuckhead can see the blue scrub pants under my overcoat, and the ventilated green plastic clogs, so he thinks I’ve got drugs and money on me. And maybe that I’ve taken some kind of oath not to kick his fuckhead ass for trying to mug me.
I barely have enough drugs and money to get me through the day. And the only oath I took, as I recall, was to first do no harm. I’m thinking we’re past that point.
Dr. Brown then goes on to describe with clinical precision the inherent structural weaknesses of the human arm, which he proceeds to exploit. Methodically. The good doctor, you see, is a former Mafia hit man and martial artist, and the addition of detailed anatomical knowledge of the sort a physician possesses only makes him more dangerous. Why has he become a doctor at all, you ask? Well, because the Mafia is out to get him, and he needed a good cover for witness protection. After all, you never go against the family.
Bazell started with a writing degree, but like any good overachiever, he wrote Beat the Reaper while finishing medical school. It has the intelligence and precision you’d expect if, say, Dr. Gregory House were a real person, from Brooklyn, who passed the time writing novels about doctors who kick ass while mastering the art of pithy comebacks, illuminating footnotes, and clever violence. It’s as crass as you might expect – this isn’t delicate subject matter – and the book easily packs in more F-bombs than The Big Lebowski. Which is a lot, in case you felt like checking. If you have an aversion to profanity, overt sexual innuendo, violence, or amazing writing, you should steer clear of Bazell’s books. To wit: this is an author who has his main character describe himself as follows: “I look like a dick with a fist on the end of it.” If that sort of descriptive language doesn’t throw you off, then you’ll want to get right to Beat the Reaper and then hurry up and dig into the sequel, Wild Thing, which is (believe it or not) the subject of this review.
Wild Thing picks up just a few short years after Beat the Reaper leaves off. Dr. Brnwa, now using the assumed name of Dr. Lionel Azimuth, is no longer in WITSEC. Since the mob managed to catch up to him anyway (he escaped), he’s working his way up to finding them instead, and that means living on the lam on his own terms. Which, for the present moment, involves working as a physician on a cruise ship, extracting the rotten teeth of South American crew members and treating virtually everyone for STDs. The Love Boat lives on, and Brnwa hates every minute of it.
He’s soon recruited, however, through his brilliant and mysterious WITSEC mentor, to pay a visit to a reclusive billionaire (referred to only by the nickname Rec Bill, naturally) who wants him to do a job.
The job? Accompany and protect a young, sexy (of course!) paleontologist on Rec Bill’s payroll, Dr. Violet Hurst, on a mission to discover whether there is, in fact, a Loch Ness Monster-esque creature in Minnesota’s White Lake. Supposedly it’s been eating local livestock, domesticated animals, and the limbs of anyone getting too close to the water. We also know from the prologue (though our protagonists do not) that it’s been munching on teenagers partying on the water.
Sound far fetched? It is, and it’s an odd setting to stick a character peeled from the intricately woven framework of one of the most finely crafted action/thrillers I’ve ever read. The connection between Brnwa and the events and characters of this story is so tenuous, you just have to make the jump in suspension of disbelief and get on with it. It almost has the feeling of an alternate universe story, where the creators of well-loved comic book characters play a big fat game of “what if” and stick their heroes in weird and unexpected timelines to see what happens.
But if it isn’t as good as Beat the Reaper, it still works. Mostly because Bazell is a genius writer who just can’t put together a boring paragraph. Brnwa (aka Brown, aka Azimuth) is an unusually fun character. He’s the bad guy who is really a good guy with a heart of gold (and hands that should be registered as lethal weapons) that you just can’t help rooting for when the chips are down. Violet Hurst is less enjoyable, and a tease to boot, but she and Brwna share enough interesting dialogue that you forgive her for it. That and the fact that you can’t help trying to imagine a woman who has “Bettie Page bangs” who also “looks like a pin-up. A pin-up who can box.”
The other characters in Wild Thing come across as mostly two-dimensional. They’re a bit like icebergs, though: vaguely interesting on the surface, but mostly unexplored depth. You get the feeling that they could have been fleshed out into something really interesting, but they’re all just so ancillary to the Brnwa/Hurst banter that they never quite make it there. That said, in a book about an ex-Mafia hit man turned doctor hanging out with a paleontologist who looks “like Wonder Woman” who join a group of rich people on an adventure tour in search of an American lake monster that eats people (take a breath now if you’re reading aloud) you’re not really looking for profound character development. You’re looking for a good time – and you get one.
And just wait until you find out who the referee of the big adventure is. You want to talk about alternate universes and intrusions upon the suspension of disbelief? You’ll never see it coming, I can tell you that. Chances are, though, you’ll be amused by it. At least if you’re the kind of person who will read a book like this.
A couple more quibbles. For starters, Bazell is an author who, for all his talent, telegraphs his punches. There’s a section in Wild Thing where our two protagonists get into a rather Freudian discussion about the problem with Scooby-Doo. I’ll skip the S&M theories about Daphne and Velma, and focus on this bit, where the dialogue reads like an easter egg synopsis of the story itself. Like a metaphor within a metaphor:
“Can I come?”
“Sleep. I’ll be be back before you wake up. I’ll get gas for the Mystery Machine.”
She grinds her palms into her eyes. “Don’t say that. I hate Scooby-Doo.”
I should leave.
“Why?” I say.
“The fucking monster always turns out to be fake. It’s always just some loser in glow-in-the dark paint, trying to steal money from a yuppie who doesn’t even know the money exists.”
There is a point near the conclusion of the White Lake Monster mystery where Bazell reveals, Scooby-style, an old man in a monster mask. The only thing missing is the exclamation, “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” (Whether or not he’s actually behind the White Lake Monster or just a distraction from the real thing is something you’ll have to read the book to find out.)
Another quibble. There is a quote, attributed to one of several authors but popularized by S.M. Stirling, which should be born in mind by the novelist: “There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot.”
This only holds true if the author holds the line on ideological deniability. Bazell, on the other hand, disregards this maxim with relish. The left-wing ideology that bleeds through in the characters and characterizations in Wild Thing isn’t overwhelming, but it is obvious. Hurst is a climate change fatalist. A particular right-wing character is portrayed in an even more foolish light than even their real life antics paint them. A Christian minister solicits a prostitute. A couple of wealthy fundamentalists get into a stupid argument against the theory of evolution, which they lose in a humiliating fashion. These ideological constructs in some cases fit the characters as they’ve been developed, and in others are jarring to the narrative. But what really kills the illusion that the characters may not be channeling the views of the author is the appendix. Entitled, CANDIDATES FOR POINT OF NO RETURN ON CLIMATE CHANGE and WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT NOW (by Violet Hurst), this Appendix is a literal diatribe, that ranges across topics political, environmental, and even conspiratorial, all from a far-left perspective. Considering that this appendix adds absolutely nothing to the story, and is tacked on awkwardly at the end, it strikes me as a very bad idea.
Personally, my political and religious philosophies exclude me from the choir Bazell Hurst is preaching to. That said, I’m a grownup, and I not only recognize the reality of other viewpoints, but I have respect for people who come by them honestly. I consider many of these individuals friends. I can have civil conversations with people who don’t see the universe the way I do, but not everyone thinks like me. As a writer, I know I can’t keep the themes I care about out of my work, but I want to be sure they aren’t presented in such a heavy-handed fashion that they turn off people who disagree with me but might otherwise enjoy my stories. In my opinion, that’s just bad business, but I sense that Bazell (in a manner reminiscent of Brnwa himself) just really doesn’t give a crap. It annoyed me, but it didn’t derail the entertainment value of the story for me. YMMV.
In any event, Wild Thing ends on a note that leaves you hungry for more. It’s the perfect setup for a third book, which, hopefully, will veer away from the underdeveloped (but still enjoyable) campiness of Wild Thing and return to the guns and glory awesomeness of Beat the Reaper.
A few technical notes: I pounded through this book in three days, switching up between my paper copy and the audiobook. Robert Petkoff does the audiobook reading, and let me just stop for a moment right now and talk about what an absolutely perfect job he does bringing Brnwa to life. His vocal style is sardonic, dispassionate, kinetic. There’s just a tone he invokes that says, “I cannot adequately express to you what a badass I am, and how above all of this I continue to be.” I can’t read a sentence of Beat the Reaper or Wild Thing without hearing his voice. In fact, I couldn’t write this review without hearing it. If you’re not the sort of person who shudders at the idea of listening to a book instead of sitting down and reading it, get the audiobook. The experience is, in my opinion, infinitely more enjoyable. If you get both, beware. The audiobook is unabridged, but the text is different in a number of places (it feels like the fruit of revisions, not omissions) and it’s noticeable if you read along with the audio.
I’d like to thank Justin Levine at Hachette Book Group for my review copy. Mitch Kelly at Hachette had also planned on sending me a copy of the audiobook, but I haven’t received it yet so I went with a library copy. I’m extremely grateful nonetheless, and will happily add it to my personal library all the same. As father of five, I don’t have a lot of disposable income to fuel my book fetish, and these publisher review copies are a life saver for me so that I can adequately review and get books in the hands of others.
Read. Review. Write.
May 10th
I read a lot of novels. By “read,” of course, I usually mean “listen to.” I spend about 3 hours in my car every day commuting hither and yon. And I go absolutely stir crazy when I have to sit there with nothing to do but bide my time as I creep along to school, to work, or back home again.
Last year, I tore through about a dozen novels, all of them audiobooks. This year, I’ve got another 6 novels under my belt, and I’m in various stages of reading three more (with another half dozen non-fiction books in the mix for 2012 too). I’m actually getting my hands on dead tree versions again, though these take me a lot longer to get through. Too many distractions in a house full of kids. When I’m in my car, I’m on book island.
Since I read (listen to) so many, I’ve decided to start adding book reviews to my content mix. It allows me to talk about books I love, and it also gives me the opportunity to get free review copies from publishers. As I see it, this is a win/win situation: I have limited disposable income to buy books (I get most of my stuff these days from the library) and publishers have publicity copies to give away so people like me can talk the books up to their friends. Social media influence at its finest, that.
I recently found the secret about how to get my hands on these review copies, and tried it out. On my first attempt, I scored a copy of Josh Bazell’s new pulp fiction sarcasm/monster fest, Wild Thing. Which, not coincidentally, will be my first review.
Stay tuned.
Is The World You Inhabit Real or Fake?
May 2nd
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see…
I walk the pavement at the bottom of my driveway, and suddenly, unexpectedly, things come into focus. The individual stones, textured in a slathering of asphalt the color of elephant hide. I slide my phone into my pocket, and wait out a brief dizzy spell as I make the jarring transition from my head space to the real world.
My eyes take in the gravel road shoulder, the dead leaves, the growing green foliage, the wildflowers, the lush trees. I an smell the chlorophyll. Almost taste it. I stand here, on the road in front of my house, and take it all in, my senses sharpen. Awakening now are my smell, hearing, and touch. My eyes, so used to being my only interface with the world, reel with additional, overwhelming input. It occurs to me that I exist, and I am physically present in both space and time. I can feel the muscles in my thighs contract and relax as I walk slowly up the hill. There are insect sounds in the trees. Birds. The noise of children playing in the back yard, faint but discernible.
And then I’m slipping again, back into that other universe. I pull my phone out of my pocket and take a video. I enjoy this, I think. Other people will too. I have to share it. I begin to realize what I’m doing. A little voice in my head reminds me of something. It may be a rationalization, I’m not sure. I am a content producer it says. I am producing content.
After a quick spin in place with the camera, I force myself to put it away again. I came down here to simply bring out the trash, but instead I have remembered that I am a human being and am alive. This is an obvious thing, but not an insignificant one. So how can I so often forget it?
I spend my life in front of electronic screens. Big screens, small screens, multiple screens, single screens. I have a smart phone, a laptop, a home desktop, a work PC with two monitors, an LCD HDTV, a conference room projector. I receive information from all of these screens in a steady, constant stream. Each day, I write in the ballpark of ten thousand words and read multiple tens of thousands. I view hundreds if not thousands of images. Scores of Facebook posts. Thousands of tweets. Dozens of Instagram photos. Between my work and personal accounts, I easily receive 200 emails per day. I respond to about a third of them, but I read almost all. In my car, I listen to audiobooks. This year, I’ve already consumed no fewer than 8 novels, in whole or in part. Sometimes at night, I watch television. Movies. I occasionally play a video game.
I am awash in an information stream so rich that I can barely keep my head above its tides. What they say about drinking from a fire hose is apt, except that it seemingly fails to describe the scope of the experience. It’s like drinking from the ocean. From under the water.
When I was a kid, I’d read about the coming age of virtual reality, and I’d imagine goggles, haptic gloves, maybe even a holodeck. I foresaw a virtual world that engulfed the senses through prophylactic obfuscation, the real world blocked out so it could be replaced by simulacrum. It’s turned out to be so much simpler than that, if no less immersive.
We create our own virtual reality. We submerge ourselves in the torrent, dipping in, taking what we can, saving or sharing what we want to keep, forgetting more than we will ever know. It’s a fragmentary existence, and it is all-consuming. My wife speaks to me as I stare at the stream, and though I hear her voice, I have no recollection of the words or their meaning. I glance at my phone in the car for just a second, and somehow people are honking at me because the light has already turned green. I thumb through news while I walk, stopping awkwardly on the sidewalk. I tap out texts on route to the bathroom. I check my phone for updates as though I have phantom limb, an itch that I perceive even when there is nothing to scratch. I sometimes wonder if I will go blind, and if I do, how I will continue to receive these many stimuli.
I have watched the evolution of the graphics processor, each iteration of microchip rendering the pseudo-world in more crystal-perfect clarity than the one before. They grow bigger, louder. They bristle with transistors, first thousands, then millions, then billions. They sprout enormous fans, grow tendrils that suck power from multiple sources, breathe vast quantities of expended heat. The world we strive to recreate inches and creeps closer to the world we already inhabit.
Outside, the resolution is already breathtaking. The pansies stun in yellow so bold and crimsons so deep, so vibrant, its as if someone has turned the contrast filter all the way up. There is rust on the gray-painted steel I-beams, flaking, crumbling off. There are cracks in the brick and the cement ceiling of the garage. The faded, water-damaged wooden steps have iron spikes driven deep within them, and green algae grows faintly on the corners where few feet ever tread.
The world is alive. It is beautiful. You can touch it, and taste it. You can smell it, and hear it. And your eyes, if you will let them, can observe things you have forgotten to notice.
It’s all there. All the sensory data you could ever want. You could never capture it all.
It’s like drinking from a fire hose. Only it’s a lot more pleasant than that.
Think That Klout Doesn’t Matter? Think Again.
Apr 26th
I’ll admit it right off the bat: when it comes to Klout, I bought in early. I’m a “Klout OG” and I’ve got the badge to prove it. No, really:
There were times when I felt self-conscious about it. I saw so many social media luminaries bashing the platform. In a Twitter conversation with Justin Kownacki – no social media slouch – he revealed to me his real feelings about Klout: “if a “social media consultant” ever cited Klout during a pitch, I’d walk him to the nearest taxi.”
I disagreed at the time, but I was uncertain. I thought maybe I had missed something. But the more I thought about it, the more sure I became. I’ve talked about this before. Klout may be imperfect, but it’s the best measure we’ve got on the aggregated data points that make up online influence.
Today, I came across Seth Stephenson’s piece on Wired about “What Your Klout Score Really Means.” And it’s very telling. In contrast to Kownacki’s assertion, Stephenson recounts this rather sobering wake-up call:
Last spring Sam Fiorella was recruited for a VP position at a large Toronto marketing agency. With 15 years of experience consulting for major brands like AOL, Ford, and Kraft, Fiorella felt confident in his qualifications. But midway through the interview, he was caught off guard when his interviewer asked him for his Klout score. Fiorella hesitated awkwardly before confessing that he had no idea what a Klout score was.
The interviewer pulled up the web page for Klout.com—a service that purports to measure users’ online influence on a scale from 1 to 100—and angled the monitor so that Fiorella could see the humbling result for himself: His score was 34. “He cut the interview short pretty soon after that,” Fiorella says. Later he learned that he’d been eliminated as a candidate specifically because his Klout score was too low. “They hired a guy whose score was 67.”
Partly intrigued, partly scared, Fiorella spent the next six months working feverishly to boost his Klout score, eventually hitting 72. As his score rose, so did the number of job offers and speaking invitations he received. “Fifteen years of accomplishments weren’t as important as that score,” he says.
If a Klout score is important to the employability of communications and marketing professionals, it’s also important to the consumer experience:
At the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas last summer, clerks surreptitiously looked up guests’ Klout scores as they checked in. Some high scorers received instant room upgrades, sometimes without even being told why. According to Greg Cannon, the Palms’ former director of ecommerce, the initiative stirred up tremendous online buzz. He says that before its Klout experiment, the Palms had only the 17th-largest social-networking following among Las Vegas-based hotel-casinos. Afterward, it jumped up to third on Facebook and has one of the highest Klout scores among its peers.
Klout is starting to infiltrate more and more of our everyday transactions. In February, the enterprise-software giant Salesforce.com introduced a service that lets companies monitor the Klout scores of customers who tweet compliments and complaints; those with the highest scores will presumably get swifter, friendlier attention from customer service reps. In March, luxury shopping site Gilt Groupe began offering discounts proportional to a customer’s Klout score.
Matt Thomson, Klout’s VP of platform, says that a number of major companies—airlines, big-box retailers, hospitality brands—are discussing how best to use Klout scores. Soon, he predicts, people with formidable Klout will board planes earlier, get free access to VIP airport lounges, stay in better hotel rooms, and receive deep discounts from retail stores and flash-sale outlets. “We say to brands that these are the people they should pay attention to most,” Thomson says. “How they want to do it is up to them.”
Stephenson discusses the potential problems with this means of assessment, but for the moment, that’s not my concern. This is no longer an issue of if businesses should be looking at Klout scores this way, but how it will affect you.
You certainly don’t have to play, but the game goes on, with or without you. And isn’t that the heart of the message we social media evangelists have been shouting from the rooftops to our clients, colleagues, and business partners for at least the last 6 years? That social media is happening, with or without them, so it’s better to engage and shape the course of events rather than stand on the sidelines and hope it will pass?
My gut is telling me that Klout is here to stay, and that none of the other competitors that have risen up – ProSkore, Kred, etc. – will do more than nip at Klout’s heels. Klout will get smarter. The algorithms will get better. And Klout scores will matter more, not less.
Video Games: Opiate of the Mass Effect?
Apr 23rd
If you want this shirt, you need help.
No matter how you slice it, gaming is huge business. Over $10 billion annually in sales, and the vast majority of American households play video games. (For a bunch of interesting stats, check out this handy infographic from the ESRB.) An ever-increasing number of us could probably be considered gamers, whether it’s as simple as our Angry Birds addiction or the Wii Tennis Parties we have when there’s a family get-together, or a more serious habit like that fostered by the MMORPG fanboys (and girls). Even the music industry is getting in on the action. If you haven’t heard it before, good luck getting this song out of your head:
Gaming was a staple of my life as far back as I can remember. I don’t know if the memory is accurate, but I distinctly remember riding on my dad’s shoulders out of the mall at about age 3 while he carried a shopping bag with our brand new wood-veneered Atari 2600. I remember nights spent playing Stampede! and Air Sea Battle and Chopper Command and, of course, Pac Man. When I made it into school, we had educational games in the classroom. I was a huge fan of games like The Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego. When we got our first home PC (An 8086 with 640K RAM, CGA graphics, two 5.25″ floppies and no hard drive) the Christmas after I turned 10 years old, I started hunting for games everywhere I could find them. Shareware bins, friends houses, and the growing software section in retail stores. By the time I was 17, I had bought a much nicer computer, a Sega Genesis and Sega CD, and was reading gaming magazines looking for the newest and best. I had also by this time routinely begun to play games for 6-10 hours at a clip, immersing myself in the experience and tuning out the world. By college, I knew how to build and fix computers, run them faster, make them play better. During my senior thesis (which I did during Spring Break, because I was lame) I took a break and bought myself a Sega Dreamcast, and we had alcohol-fueled Soul Calibur tournaments into the wee hours of pretty much every night thereafter.
I didn’t know it, but I had a serious problem. My wife figured it out after I was let go from my job upon returning from our Honeymoon, only for me to lay around on the floor of our unfurnished condo playing Unreal Tournament all day while she supported us. Oh, I looked for jobs, too, but it was a half-assed attempt. I was much more interested in improving my Capture the Flag rankings. Games had been such a part of my life for so long, such a consolation from the disappointments of the world and my own inadequacies as a clumsy, non-athletic nerd, that I had come to depend on them as a coping mechanism without knowing that this is what I was doing. I was simply hot for the chase, the thrill of solving the next puzzle, shooting the bad guys, driving at breakneck speeds to outrun the cops, and in general just living out the exciting life and sense of purpose that I was ultimately lacking in the real world.
In “meatspace,” I was a loser. In games, I was a badass. It couldn’t be simpler. And so, during the times of my life when I was at my lowest, when I needed to be out busting butt and clawing my way forward to provide for my family, I would instead devote my considerable intellectual capabilities toward planning effective airstrikes in Command & Conquer: Generals.
This is the insidious thing about video games. They allow every washed-up, lazy, ambitionless slacker to feel the euphoria of accomplishment without ever doing anything in real life. This pushes an endorphin button in your brain so hard that you come back again, and again, and again. And if you were destined to really become someone and share your talents with the world, but you used video games to salve the sullen times when you were busy schlepping burgers so you could pay your dues, you may have in fact doomed yourself to become the washed-up, lazy, ambitionless slacker you were never meant to be. Because the allure of the game will always call you back. Just one more level. Just one more mission. Just one more…
I pretty much quit video games cold turkey a couple years ago. I started finding real, actual things to do that felt productive and pushed some of those same endorphin buttons in my brain. So I began replacing video games with these activities, and I hardly experienced any withdrawal. I’d plop down for the occasional tryst with Fallout 3 or Portal 2, or every now and then fire up my copy of The UrQuan Masters (which you can get for free and relive one of the best sci-fi action RPGs ever, and which really helped define the genre) for a bit of interstellar fisticuffs, but nothing that rose to the same level as before. I was free!
Then came this past weekend. I had come down with some kind of nasty, ache all over and feel completely exhausted cold that makes you just want to do nothing. With plenty of rain in the forecast and not much that needed doing, I gave in to the temptation and cracked open a copy of Mass Effect 3.
A word about Mass Effect - it’s just about the most well developed and interesting popular science fiction universe since Star Wars, and the whole series is a work of artistic and gameplay genius. Someone gave me a copy of Mass Effect, and I liked it so much I actually showed up at Target the morning Mass Effect 2 came out and plunked down whatever they were asking so I didn’t have to wait. I had more restraint with the third installment in the trilogy, but I knew I couldn’t resist forever.
So there I was, just giving it a little spin to see how it felt. I’d play for a little bit then take a nap. Maybe get some reading in or a movie with the boys. I would just get warmed up, catch up on the story, get a couple missions under my belt, etc. 10 hours later, I wondered why my body hurt so much, and why it was so dark in the house. And I did the same thing again on Sunday. I racked up at least 16 hours of gameplay in two days. I Could. Not. Stop. At one point last night, I actually heard myself saying to my wife, “I’m just going to finish this mission, and then we can do whatever you’d like.”
I’m just going to finish this mission? SERIOUSLY?!? AM I FIFTEEN YEARS OLD AGAIN?!?!?
I suddenly remembered why I had lost so much of my life to these games. They just take you away to another place, where you can have adventure safely, meet new and interesting people, and shoot them in the face with cryo-bullets that freeze their bodies and make them shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. Unless you’re Richard Branson, chances are very good that video games are a lot more interesting and exciting than your life is. And that’s why they will completely replace it if you let them.
I wonder how many amazing writers, composers, filmmakers, and artists we’ll never know about because their parents bought them an XBOX as a seemingly harmless Christmas present. You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. I can only imagine how much more I would have accomplished if I had pursued my fiction writing instead of immersing myself in the fiction of others. I’d probably have finished several novels by now. Maybe even gotten one of them published. When cyberpunk novelist and legend William Gibson was asked how he has been able to write so many books, he responded, “I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here.”
What he says about TV goes doubly for games. They take longer to consume, and they lure you so much deeper in.
So, will I finish Mass Effect 3? Yes. I’m fairly confident that I will, because I want to know the rest of the story. And because it’s fun.
Will I pick up another video game soon? Probably not. It’s just not worth getting addicted. I’ve got some real-life leveling up to do, and I’d rather not let anything so purposeless get in the way.
Website is Back; Hosting Issues Fixed (For Now)
Apr 18th
Just a quick note – I had some major site trouble over the past 24 hours, but it appears things have been restored to normalcy.
Waaaaay back in 2010 (can you even remember that far into the past?) my site got hacked by some Saudi Arabian cyberpunk. No, really. I’m not kidding.
Well, I wasn’t exactly employing heavy password security back in those days, and I was stupid enough to use the same password for every website. (I also remember the days when I didn’t have to lock the door at night, and could leave my car open…nevermind.)
Once I got the hack resolved and the website restored, I thought things were fine. I upgraded my password security. I was ready to move on.
Then a month or two ago my hosting account got suspended for spamming. I was puzzled by this, but sure enough, when I logged into my webmail for my steveskojec.com domain, I had THOUSANDS of bouncebacks for emails that had been sent from my account.
So I got my account re-instated, changed the email password to something even stronger, and went on my merry way. All done, right?
Nope. Not a chance.
Yesterday afternoon, after spending the morning in meetings, I checked my email only to find that it’s happened again. Hack. Email. Spam. Account Suspended. None of words are words I want to see together in a sentence.
I responded to the rep at Site5. Usually they’re very quick. Nothing. I ping them on Twitter. They apologize. Still nothing. I beat the drum on my ticket. I can’t even log in to my admin panel to fix things because I’m locked out. Guilty until proven innocent, I guess, when spam is coming from your site. I hit them up on Twitter again. Despite the fact that I’m the one who got hacked, I had to wait, oh, 18 hours or so before they responded to my repeated requests to deal with the problem. And this only after I emailed them four times and mentioned them on Twitter another three times.
Finally able to log in, I change my FTP password and upgrade a non-public-facing copy of WordPress I have sitting in a root directory. Which proceeds to overwrite my custom index.html page in that directory, so I spend even more time chasing down a copy of that to restore. Only I can’t find it. So I go to the Wayback Machine, download their copy, and strip the HTML down and fix the links. Finally, more than 24 hours after the initial incident, I’m back in business.
This is obviously hugely inconvenient, but that happens. What could make life better, though, would be some real responsiveness from the support team at the hosting company. I have been with Site5 since 2008, and I haven’t had a single complaint (other than no privacy registration for domains) in four years with them. But having been met with the great wall of silence for such a long period of time while my site was MIA did not make me happy. Luckily, I’m not using the site for my livelihood. Yet.
On the flip side, I’ve been dealing with slow server times for WEEKS with FatCow, which provides hosting for my wife’s website. And when I say slow, I mean REALLY slow. Regardless of domain forwarding. And their customer service is abysmal. It takes DAYS to get back to us sometimes.
I get that hosting on the cheap relies on aggregate business to provide residual income streams that add up to real profits. Paying 5 to 8 bucks a month for hosting isn’t exactly going to get me Nordstrom-esque service. But at the same time, that’s the business model in play. Just because you’ve priced a service to move doesn’t mean a customer shouldn’t expect to get issues taken care of promptly. Too many of us have income on the line to have to worry about reliable hosting or support. I’m not a chronic complainer about bad service. I get it – things go wrong, stuff falls through the cracks, the power goes out. I am not the guy who sends back a steak because it’s medium rare and I ordered rare. But suspended accounts and slow websites kill traffic, and traffic is the stuff of life on the web.
I’m seriously considering finding a new host for me. I know I’ll be moving Jamie’s site soon. I’ve heard that for sites that primarily run on WordPress, Bluehost is good. Any other recommendations?
Instagram or Photoblog?
Apr 16th
I’m just one of millions of new Instagram users, now that it’s available for Android. I’ve been playing with it a bit and I’ve uploaded a few things. There’s a lot to like, and a bunch I’m still figuring out.
As you may already know, I’m a fairly avid photographer. This is a hobby for me, so it waxes and wanes with available time to pursue it, but I find it therapeutic when I can just get camera in my hand and start shooting. I’ve thought often about starting a photoblog so I have somewhere to display the various things I shoot on a semi-regular basis, but now I’m not sure.
On the one hand, Instagram has that beautiful built-in community and social network integration that makes sharing a snap. Every picture I take can be in one place, and I can use tags to separate themes. It’s easy enough to throw an Instagram gallery into a post or page (as I’ve done here) or to put a recap of my most recent Instagrams in the sidebar, as I’ve done on the right.
But does this replace the utility, control, and look/feel of the good-old photoblog? Should a photographer spend the extra time and effort to get their DSLR photos on their phone for the upload to Instagram, as I’ve seen some do, and not worry about the loss in size/resolution? Is it worth it to put pictures in both places? With a service like ifttt, you can easily set up a rule that will post your Instagram photos to the tumblr of your choice.
(This ties into a larger discussion that I am still contemplating: we’re all content producers now, and many of us produce in multiple forms of media. How do we best showcase our work online without appearing unfocused? I don’t know about you, but I use all of my various creative talents in my work, so they do play a role and are relevant to our personal brands.)
What do you think: are photoblogs out now that Instagram is ubiquitous? Or do we need to cross-pollinate content between platforms and not just restrain things to one place? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
A Funny Thing Happened at Work Today: 6 Interesting Job Experiences I’ve Had
Apr 13th
Every job is unique, and has experiences that help us to learn and grow. Some experiences are just bizarre. I’ve been working since I was 15, and I’ve probably had 20 different jobs over the years, ranging from cemetery groundskeeper to pizza maker to floor manager for a TV show to association management. I’ve dug ditches in a dusty trailer park and I’ve rubbed elbows with some of the most powerful people in corporate America. And I realize, looking back on it, that it’s all part of a pretty amazing story.
Here are a few of the more interesting things I’ve seen while I was on the job:
1. The Man with No Face
I looked for an image as terrifying as the real thing, but I couldn't do that to you. You can Google that yourself.
When I was 16, I worked at a hardware store in Northern Pennsylvania. It was my first real job where I could work a decent number of hours and make some extra money, which I chose instead of continuing to play high school football. It was a pretty hum-drum place, and excitement was hardly the norm. I unloaded bags of cement from the delivery truck, mixed paint, made keys, threaded pipes, sharpened chain saw blades, and ran the register. I also earned my merit badge in floor sales, and my co-workers called me “Bob Villa” because of how little I actually knew but how smoothly I could talk a customer through their purchasing decisions.
One day, an elderly man came in to the store. My co-workers, and even the store owner, all scattered. When I got a good look at the man, I knew why. He had no face. I don’t know how else to describe it. He had a forehead, and eyes, but below the bridge of his nose there was a gaping hole. No teeth, no jaw, just a hole into the back of his head. From the bridge of his nose itself hung a damp handkerchief, held in place with athletic tape. It did little to cover the wet, mutilated abyss behind it. To say that the site was gruesome would be a serious understatement.
Since everyone else had ditched, I hiked up my big-boy pants and did my best to help him. Creepy or not, the guy was a human being, and he deserved customer service just like anyone else. He couldn’t speak, so he made a lot of wheezy grunting noises and pointed to things in our sale ad as I walked him around the store. When he was finished, I rang him up quickly, noticing that my hands were literally shaking.
I never saw him again. I never figured out how someone could sustain so much damage to their face and continue living that way without falling prey to massive infection. I never thought I would eat lunch again either, but the fact that I was a teenage boy and had a hot Philly cheesesteak sandwich and a root beer waiting for me eventually won out, tremors be damned.
2. The Exorcism
It's always good at an exorcism to have extra muscle.
During summer breaks from college, I worked a couple of jobs. I started at an independent family-owned Pizza shop called Brozzetti’s – famous among the residents of Binghamton, New York for its 50+ years of unique pizzas. Then I upgraded, getting a job working for my parish as a groundskeeper, maintenance guy, and overall office assistant. I had become friends with the priest who was our pastor, and working together with him was usually a very pleasant task that involved difficult missions like going out to lunch after I’d finished mowing, weeding, painting, etc.
One day, after a long afternoon in the sun, I headed inside to get a drink of water. I knew Father was in his office counseling someone, so I walked by quietly. Instead of ignoring me, though, he called out to me.
“Stephen,” he said in a tone that was both measured and tense, “I need you to go into the living room and get me the crucifix and the holy water.”
I wanted to question him. But I looked at the woman sitting in the chair facing him, her back to me, unmoving, silent, head down, hair obscuring every angle of her face, and I knew. This woman was possessed. I moved quickly, getting him what he needed, and maneuvering around her, fearing that she would lash out. She didn’t, and I quickly retreated into the hall. Once he had the items in hand, though, and she was confronted with them, all kinds of fun things started to happen. The details are hazy, but I do recall that I managed not to pee myself. Not even a little bit. I did a lot of praying, Father did a lot of telling the demons where they could go, and the demons made her say cute things in a bizarre voice and it was just a great big tea party for everyone involved.
I was also there on a second occasion when this same person came to visit, and watched in horror as she ripped a rosary to shreds and threw it all over the church, blasphemed, spoke in strange languages, and used a voice that was about 27 octaves deeper than her normal speaking voice. Among other things.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep that summer. I also didn’t put it on my resume.
3. Iron Mike
Once, while living in Arizona, I got a job as a desert tour guide for Stellar Adventures. My job involved picking guests up at their respective hotels, driving them in my Hummer H1 through the Four Peaks Wilderness Area, teaching my guests about cacti, desert flora and fauna, and generally driving over under and through impossible obstacles.
The drive from the hotels out to the trail was a long one, and a good chunk of the trip was spent on the highway on our way out to the trail. One afternoon, as I was bringing a tour out on the 101 loop through Scottsdale, a sleek, black BMW pulled up along side me and matched my speed. I was driving a Hummer modified with an open safari kit that could fit 14 people. Whatever aerodynamic should look like, we were the opposite. Matching my speed wasn’t difficult.
The passenger window rolled down, and a man stuck his head out and yelled something at me. My heart sunk. Was something hanging off my truck? Had a passenger fallen off and bounced down the road? Was I leaking transmission fluid? I turned to face him to see if I could make out what he was saying over the roar of the wind.
And that’s when my facial recognition software kicked in. The face was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Then I saw the face tattoo and it clicked…
I managed to take this picture with my cell phone. Before they were 8 megapixels and had satellite uplinks. While driving. As Mike Tyson would say, "That's ludicrous!"
Mike Freaking Tyson. He had my full attention now, which was probably not a good thing, because keeping a huge Humvee between the lines at 60MPH on a curve isn’t exactly the easiest task even with full concentration.
“What?!” I yelled. “I turned to the people in my vehicle. “It’s Mike Tyson.” I informed them. Like this was an every day occurrence.
“I said,” he squealed, the road noise obscuring his notorious lisp, but not making him much more understandable, “If I call the number on the side of your truck, can you guys make mine look like that?”
“Sure!” I said, having no idea what he was talking about. “Give it a call!” Then it clicked – Tyson must have a Hummer of his own, and he wanted a safari kit. I had no confidence that we could provide this, but at least we could point him in the right direction. And my boss could get a call from Kid Dynamite.
Alas, Mike Tyson never called. So I never got to have a heart to heart with him about his Phil Collins obsession.
4. The Scorpion
I got more than one good story out of the Hummer job. Like the drunk Canadians who gave me a $400 tip. Or the group of CSIs who couldn’t stop bashing their TV counterparts, also got drunk, complained about having to analyze womens’ underwear, and wanted to go scorpion hunting in the dark using black lights. (To be fair, this is a fun activity.)
But I ran into a different kind of scorpion one day on the trail. Well, it actually started at the hotel.
It’s rare to have a tour with only two people, but I rolled up on the Ritz Carlton in downtown Phoenix, and out strolled a dude with long, black hair, sunglasses, a light t-shirt, and designer jeans. He was accompanied by a woman in her 40s, blonde, also dressed in designer jeans, and looking like she was probably rather attractive at some point in the not too distant past. I had the distinct impression that I had picked up a couple of minor celebrities. Time would tell.
As it turned out, the man was from Poland, and he was extremely enthusiastic about the open views of the desert afforded from the back of the Hummer with its roll-up windows and canvas top. A little more digging, and I found out that his name was Paweł Mąciwoda. I cut and pasted that, just so you know, because I have no idea how to make the letters look that way. Just like I had no idea who Paweł Mąciwoda was.
As it turned out, he was the new-ish bassist for a little band you may have heard of called The Scorpions.
This happened.
Well, the news didn’t exactly rock me like a hurricane, but I remembered the 1990s with a certain nostalgic fondness, so I was cool with this revelation. I used to whistle and sing along to Wind of Change while I was doing the dishes for my mom back in high school, so I felt like we had a connection.
Alas, he didn't bring a guitar. Just the hand signal for love.
We got out to the trailhead and he jumped out, shouting out exaggerated exclamations in only the way that someone from Europe can. And then he decided it was time to toke up. Naturally. Because it’s not like we have Park Rangers or anything. I warned him to keep the medicinal herbs on the DL during the tour, and he agreed, which meant that instead of lighting up while we were driving, he only hit the pipe when we stopped. Which was every five minutes.
We had a good time, though. He took lots of pictures and video. And when I got back to the shop and was cleaning out my truck, I noticed that he had left something.
Whoopsie!
I figured he might want that back, so I gave him a ring. We made an arrangement, and I swung by the hotel with it after work. In exchange, he gave me a DVD with all the raw video he shot on the tour, which I edited into this:
I didn’t use any Scorpions music for the soundtrack, though, so we don’t hang out anymore.
5. The CEO
GM is serious business.
When I got an actual grownup job in communications and PR, the client I was assigned to work exclusively for was General Motors. I did media analysis, worked with the Rapid Response Team on emerging reputation crisis issues, and I got my feet wet in the world of corporate social media at a time when it was still bleeding edge. I wrote a lot of blog posts for GM, not just in my own name (PDF Alert!), but as a ghostwriter for some of their top executives. I was there when GM execs decided to use their blog to combat the defamatory column printed by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times – an early demonstration of the rising power of social media vs. mainstream media. I even got to go the design center and see the new Camaro when it was still in clay – along with a new Impala and smaller Hummer, neither of which, alas, ever saw the light of day.
All of this was fascinating. But then something unexpected happened. When then-CEO Rick Wagoner came to DC to make the round of Sunday talk shows and address the health of his company back in 2007, he decided to come to our office and meet personally with our core team to talk about what would come next in the communications plan. When I stood by our conference table and shook the hand of the man running the 3rd-largest company (by revenue) in the entire world, introducing myself and recognizing that he took a personal interest in all of us and what we were doing for his business, I realized I had found my way into some very interesting work.
6. The Electric Car
The man and his Volt.
Another interesting experience I had while working as a consultant to GM was meeting Bob Lutz. If you haven’t ever heard of him, I guarantee you’ve heard of some of his product development ideas, including the Dodge Viper, the Ford Explorer, and the BMW 3-Series. The cigar-chomping, MiG-flying, fast-car driving, vegetarian, ex-Marine pilot is like a character in a Michael Bay movie. When he would be interviewed on CNBC, making brash predictions about his company’s future, you could watch the stock price go up in real time.
Bob Lutz is, first and foremost, an idea man. And one day he came to our offices to talk about the next big thing: the electric car. At the time, the product he was calling “the iCar” was not even a concept. But advances in lithium-ion battery chemistry had finally made an electric car a reality, and Lutz, a champion of muscle cars and the Hummer brand, sat at the head of our conference table and told us that it was going to be the next big thing, and GM was going to lead the way.
I watched with great interest as they fast tracked the development of the vehicle which would later be known as the Chevy Volt, bringing immense innovation to the table and reminding the world of the technological prowess possessed by the company that is notorious for crapping out the Chevy Nova and the Pontiac Aztec, but should also be recognized for creating the first artificial heart, the moon rover, electronic fuel injection, airbags, and the first industry standard crash test dummies. (Did you know automotive crash testing used to be done with cadavers? Yeah. Gross.)
I worked with early efforts to spread awareness of the Volt, and we not only brought it to events, but even parked it on Capitol Hill so that we could better inform members of Congress. (I even got to design part of the invitation to Congressional staff.)
I also worked on social media for the DARPA Urban Challenge winner known as Boss – a robot Chevy Tahoe that could navigate a 30-mile obstacle course without human intervention. Between the tech that’s already hit the market in the Volt and the tech that’s still in development for autonomous vehicles, I’m certain I’ll be able to look back some day and tell my kids about how I had the chance to work on the early stages of concepts that people weren’t sure could ever make it - technologies that will no doubt be ubiquitous by the time they’re old enough to roll their eyes at my story.
These are among the most notable experiences I’ve had on the job, but there are dozens of other interesting examples. There are so many things to draw from when you spend such a big portion of your waking life at work, and they all become a part of your story.
What are some strange/entertaining/cool experiences you’ve had at work? Leave your story in the comments!
Gary Vaynerchuck Shows The Thank You Economy In Action
Apr 12th
In case I haven’t mentioned it yet, I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuck. His story hits so many of the right notes. Immigrant kid who starts with nothing and builds huge success, first in his own childhood entrepreneurial pursuits, then his family’s business, then his own big-time start-ups. Young guy knocking it out of the park and making bank in a way I never would have thought possible by someone only 2 years older than I am. Brash, bold, ambitious, with the absolutely massive (and in his case, believable) dream of buying the New York Jets. Social media savant who instinctively sees what’s next and makes the most of every opportunity, playing to his strengths to maximize every opportunity. Genuinely decent human being who loves his family and friends, cares about his customers, and in general (in his words) just gives a crap.
I am not now, and have never been, the sort of person who is extremely impressed by celebrity of any stripe. I have no pantheon of heroes. I’m just not wired to adore and emulate others, when I can make my own way and blaze my own trails. But something about Vaynerchuck just impresses the hell out of me. He makes me want to dig deeper, work harder, and accomplish more.
Gary has written two books: Crush It! and The Thank You Economy. I own both, and I’ve read the first; the second is still on my to-read list. But I know that The Thank You Economy is about how social media is changing business; how the interaction between brands and customers must be humanized, made personal. Connections made. Relationships built. Hard selling is not an option. There’s a way to do business in this environment, and a way not to. And this is how you don’t:
This isn’t just grandstanding, though. This is how Gary rolls. Despite having nearly a million Twitter followers, he’s responded to my tweets several times. He does this constantly. He interacts with customers, followers, fans, you name it. Sometimes I look at his Twitter stream and just scratch my head, trying to figure out how he finds the time. (I’m pretty sure he sleeps about 3 hours a night.)
One afternoon last week, I clicked over to Tweetdeck just in time to see this pop up:
Being a big-time cheese fan (possibly even a snob) I couldn’t pass this up. Within about 3 seconds, I had responded:
Before 5 minutes was out, Gary had responded to roughly half a dozen people telling them to email him their address so he could send it out. I was not on that list, despite my trigger finger on the tweet button.
Curious, I pushed my luck. I emailed him:
Gary,
You didn’t respond to me on Twitter about the cheese, despite my dreams of delicious aged dairy, but just in case you realize that you meant to ; ) :
[My Address Here]
Either way, love what you’re doing. I’m a huge fan. You’re an enormous inspiration, and I don’t say that lightly.
Best,
Steve
And as far as I knew, that was the end of it. There was no way he could send something to all the likely respondents, so I let it go. Forgot about it entirely, in fact.
And then today, I got a package delivered to my house, It was from some place called Gourmet Library in New Jersey:
I opened it up, and inside was a simple note:
When I unwrapped the contents, I found this:
It’s a Cravanzina. A good one. In fact I’ve been craving more of it since I started writing this post.
But the cheese isn’t the most significant thing. It’s the interaction. It’s the time spent. It’s the relationship building. Gary Vaynerchuck is a unique businessman with a personal approach. An approach that builds good will. Because of his approach, an the fact that it made me feel good about dealing with him, I’m voluntarily acting as a brand ambassador. And I’ll continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
He probably spent all of ten minutes requesting interest, forwarding addresses to one of his employees for fulfillment, and typing up the contents of his little note. Ten minutes. What did he get out of it?
Well, I’ve spent roughly an hour writing up this post, not to mention taking pictures to tell the story. I’ll post it, tweet it, share it. I’ve liked Gourmet Library on Facebook and followed them on Twitter. I’ll reach out to my network of friends, family, and followers and let them know that Gary V. is a guy they should pay attention to, buy products from, and interact with.
What appears on first glance to have been just a flat-out giveaway to gain interest in a new brand has actually become an exchange between two people who each have something to offer the other. What’s the ROI on that? Who knows? How do you measure good will, the trickle down effect of a sphere of influence, or the impact of making an impression on a fan/customer?
I suspect that those of us navigating the social web for business will continue to try to figure that out.
In the mean time, I’m going to eat some delicious cheese. Thanks Gary!
Is Wheat Bad for More Than Just Your Health?
Apr 11th
This kid is mad. And looks like Patton Oswalt.
Since I wrote it less than a month ago, my post entitled “Is Wheat Bad For You?” has been far and away the biggest driver of traffic to my site. This is fascinating to me, because while I write about following the Primal Blueprint on occasion, this is not the main topic area of my blog. But in less than a month, it’s coming up on 1,000 views.
People aren’t coming from direct links, either. They’re searching Google. They’re trying to figure it out. They want to know what the deal is with wheat. This tells me that this is an issue that is rising to the level of public consciousness. I’m willing to bet (prediction alert!) that within the next five to ten years, the problems wheat is causing in the Standard American Diet will be major health news. It will be the kind of thing you’re hearing about in major news outlets. It will become a focus of healthcare providers, in much the same way that a low-carb diet has become an increasingly standardized part of weight loss. Hopefully, we’ll even see additional science on this, which will shed further light on wheat-related health issues.
But until then, if you’ve chosen (choice being the key word here) to cut out wheat from your diet and you haven’t been diagnosed with a gluten issue or celiac disease (which would mean you have no choice), be aware that what you’re doing will appear to be nothing short of crazy to almost everyone around you. And you’re going to upset people. Your dietary restrictions will cause conflict. You will be a pariah at parties. I’m going to start busting into alliteration if I don’t stop now.
You can’t eat sandwiches. You can’t have fresh bread. No toast, bagels, or muffins. Crackers are a no-go. You can’t eat pasta. You’ve broken up with cakes, cookies, and doughnuts. You can’t even eat many cereals. If you’re like me and you’ve also given up (except for the occasional indulgence) all other grains, legumes, and most sugars, you also knock out anything made with beans, or rice, or potatoes, or oats, or barley, or rye, or…you get the picture. It’s not that there aren’t lots of things you can eat, it’s just that most of us have grown up eating most of the things that are on the forbidden list. Those are hard habits to break, especially if you don’t believe that it’s important.
Wheat is a staple in the lives of most people in Western Civilization. Taking out the daily bread is a big deal. Asking people not to bring wheat products over when they visit (this is especially important if you’ve taken your little kids off of it; I’d be less strict if it was just myself) or trying to politely tell people that you’ll have to avoid many of the foods they make can offend people. It can hurt feelings. It can break family traditions. It can cause fights.
When I chose to give up wheat, this was never what I intended to have happen. But I am strict about it – have to be strict about it – because my health and the health of my family is extremely important to me. My kids don’t know why they had to give up pancakes and spaghetti and rolls and cookies and cake and so many of the things that they loved. They don’t understand that with their family history of early heart disease, diabetes, and ADD (among other things) that it just isn’t worth it and the habits will be easier to break now rather than later. They can’t fathom why something so common in most people’s kitchens can be so bad. And they’ve been good sports about the alternatives we provide to them. My wife does a great job with the substitutions, and she’s a fantastic cook no matter what ingredients she’s working with. But if I put an almond flour cookie or a pumpkin pancake on their plate next to a plate with the real thing, I think they’ll still choose the real thing. If I have the option of giving them real spaghetti with meatballs or spaghetti squash with meatballs, I’m pretty sure they’ll pick the real spaghetti. So I try to keep those things off the table entirely until they’ve really adapted to this way of eating for the longer term. And when you have get-togethers with people who don’t get it, or don’t care, you’d be surprised how upset people will get.
When I commit to something, I go all-in. I’ve lost almost 30 lbs. in three months, and I’m not stopping. I feel better, I have more energy, I get more done. I have the desire to exercise on a regular basis, which is also new. I feel confident that I have vastly improved my health, and have improved my quality of life and life expectancy as well.
But I’ve started some arguments and hurt some feelings as well, which I regret. I’m passionate about this, and that’s sometimes good and sometimes bad. If you’re making this change in your life, expect some resistance, and plan to deal with it as diplomatically as possible. Wheat is something that millions of people are used to eating (and probably addicted to) and while choosing to eat it can be bad for your health, choosing not to can cause problems with your family and friends.
My advice? Try to tread lightly. And let the proof be in the results.
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