Purpose, Platforms and Practice
After cliff diving and mountain climbing comes questions, answers and discipline. As I invite people to read my blog, I continue to reflect on why I am writing it. In my first blog it’s about the birth of my voice into the cyber world and public domain.
But what exactly is the purpose? Other than pandering to my creative curiosities and finally sharing my writing.
It’s the beginning of something tangible. It’s the first layer of my Platform that I build my business plan on as a writer in the freelance world. Drawing from multiple facets of my talents and utilizing all the marketing vehicles available to me.
Building a strong and diverse platform is paramount to be successful in the freelance world. Many freelancers are also consultants or speakers in their varying areas of expertise. For me that includes restaurants, general business practices and efficiencies, hospitality and customer service related matters. I’d be delighted to be a motivational speaker on effective management styles or perhaps on positivity and power of the word. That’s a possibility down the line, once I have established myself as a solid writer.
The thoughts are coming in waves of inspiration flooding my interior navigational system. Energies open and connect to the exact right path. My feet know the way.
Then there’s books both fiction and non. I am working on a memoire-style tale of my years as a GM in Chicago and Austin. This has been in the works for some time as all my friends know because I have talked about it for so long. The 6-year mini-series drama finally ended this May allowing its GM star to re-focus and finally write.
The stories are thrashing about in the purgatory of my restaurant-ridden past begging to come to paper. I release that world transforming those experiences into words that will entertain, enlighten, encourage and engage my audience and finally tell my story, GM Jane.
As these stories materialize from my memory each key-stroke transports me to 2009, and I’m the GM of Blackbird. Embodying the wet-dish-rag-of-a-soul that I was back then tugs at a place in my ego that still makes me cringe today.
Which brings me to Practice. You can breath through even the most gut-wrenching of moments. Breathing it out and standing on the solid Platform that’s supported by its social media pillars.
Writing is a daily practice that makes the entire Platform possible. Practicing yoga rights my mind, body and soul and opens me to the joy of each day. A new daily practice I’ve added lately is engaging with social media.
I am delighted to find out how much I actually like Twitter! Before opening my own account, I was only on Twitter as a business tool for the restaurant. It’s great to be connected to the world in 140 characters or less: CNN, NY Times, Austin Chronicle, Culture Map, Huffington Post and the City of Austin, with the option to click the bit map for the full story beyond the headline. A time saver and a time eater. The daily practice of being on Twitter means I am connected to current, cultural and local happenings minute by minute.
When I told a close friend of mine that I had started a blog, he said I’ve never read a blog. My response, me neither ‘til my own. This has changed lately as I submerge myself into a culture of blogs, websites, self-promoting and self-publishing trying to visualize my version of cyber Cari.
Ultimately to be successful at any of it, you need people to read what you write. My job at this point is to keep you reading. Without you, this is just me pontificating. You reading it makes it an actual blog on the interweb.
In the modified words of my girl, Melanie Freeman at blackswanyogatv.com, at the end of every Practice. I thank you for reading! Hope it brings a little light and love to your day.
Namaste.