It all came to a head the week before last. Two of the practitioners I see (I see them a lot because of the accident) told me to sleep all weekend. No work, not even walk Fred. Just sleep.

I did. I felt tons better by Monday.

Then Wednesday came, and I had to have an MRI. I can’t get thru an MRI without some relaxing meds. My appointment was in the morning, so I slept all day again.

We are not machines, but we treat our machines better than we treat ourselves.. We make sure our cars have checkups and oil, we replace parts as they get worn out.  We know sometimes they only way to get all the processes on our computers doing what they are supposed to do requires a reboot. Even on *NIX boxes sometimes you kill with prejudice, so don’t start with me. 😉

I needed the sleep. I needed to reboot.

Thursday and Friday I was a student in a class where we learned how to interact better with customers who come to our executive briefing center. The class was intense, and I gave it 100% of my attention. I consider these two days the time I needed to boot back up to full power.

The class made me remember that I thought I could bring something to marketing because of my technical background, and also because marketing is really  just getting to the nitty gritty of helping your customers learn about what you have to offer.

And I love teaching.

The instructor told us not to be the expert, but to be curious and lots of questions.

That’s how I have always been. It’s how I teach.

I needed to reboot to remember what is important to me, why I took on the challenge of marketing. It’s funny when you do a reset, when you clear out all the overtaxed processes, how clear some things become. Here’s what I mean…

The first time I worked with a marketer where back in the PB & chocolate days at EMC with Nada Wheelock. She was the first marketer I’d ever worked with, and it opened up my eyes to the skills a real marketer has. Even back then, my interest was in the content. We worked to get the best content up for customers, and to find ways to measure if the content we chose was “the best”.

Nada definitely changed my mind about marketers. My friend Sheryl Koenigsberg, a role model for anyone technical transitioning to marketing from a tech role, wrote recently about the frustration of other departments calling what we do as marketers “fluff“. This actually happened to me when I was in the training class. Good marketers may not be technical (but Sheryl and I are… so y’all best respect 😉 ), but you’d be amazed at what they know about connecting people electonically, measuring, and interacting with customers. And by the way, most of that work is very technical in and of itself. If you are getting fluff out of your marketers, take look at how you are working with and treating this team. It takes time and energy to do the good stuff. And if other core program elements are missing, no amount of good marketing will resolve the pain you feel.

Thursday night I also attended (and pretty much missed) the opening of the 3rd annual symposium sponsored native student organizations of UT. The theme this year was Violence against Native and Indigenous Identities: Unearthing and healing our communities. The only other native event I’ve been to was the powwow, so this was nice. I didn’t know anyone but it brought back lots of memories from being at FSU.

I was able to meet Frank Waln, a native rapper who was very kind, open and real.

So, what’s next after reboot?

First of all, I am committed to treating myself better. Sleep is so important y’all! You can’t perform properly if your processes are maxed out 24x7x7.

This will mean I need to focus on the most important things at home and work. My personal goal is to focus on what i do best. And that is teaching; with good content, and hard work to take out all the obstacles out of the way of my learners.

I’m going to get back to my basic philosophy:

Dang, this felt good. 🙂