The Dinner Party

Sketch

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I'm reading Getting to Yes with Yourself: (and Other Worthy Opponents), which is interesting and in which author William Ury talks about how to negotiate with yourself. Early on, he encourages you to give your critical inner-voices personalities and to think of them as guests at a dinner party. His idea is: look, these things aren't leaving, you might as well name them and try to understand them as a way of more effectively dealing with them. Clearly, IANAA (I Am Not an Artist), but I follow Paul Greer on Instagram at @burningfp, and his sketches, which, unlike mine, are terrific, inspired me to draw some of the creatures at my dinner party. So, here is The Shrew, which whines and complains a lot. It's female and consists of a ball of fat with a matting of hair stuck to it. Meet "Judgey," a cat with mange who is never anything but critical of others. There's Hypochron, whose superpower is overreacting to everything and also catastrophizing. Let's not forget Lay-Ze-Bonez, which is quick to pronounce any lag in productivity a testament to one's laziness. And, finally, we've got I'm Thirsty. I'm Thirsty is a head-only it-thing that lives at the bottom of a glass that is barely filled with water. It's always thirsty. Despite the water. I hope you enjoyed meeting my new friends! It's actually been sort of interesting and effective to think of the voices in this way. It makes them easier to be rational in relationship to. Let's face it, these guys suck. As Ury writes: "Self-judgment may be the greatest barrier to self-understanding." 

Buy THE TUMOR, a digital short by Susannah Breslin that's been called "A masterpiece of short fiction."

Hire Me as Your Consultant

I had a meeting with a TV producer earlier today, which reminded me that I should link to my CONSULTANT page. I've helped cast feature films, produced for TV, and done digital marketing for billion-dollar brands.

Want to find out more, say hello, or hire me? Email me HERE.

That movie by that famous director starring that girl? I found her for him. That screenplay in need of doctoring? I did it. I specialize in Hollywood, vice, the global underbelly, and finding what you can't. I produce, write and doctor screenplays, help directors cast roles, conduct research, do voice overs, and serve as a popular talking head on network TV shows and documentary specials.

You Bet

Excerpt from a short story I wrote years ago:

"They were in a bar. They were in a bar with a woman and a man. It had been the two women, but they had made calls, and then the men had come. She knew when she talked to him that he was drunk. He was drunk and he was at a strip club nearby with one of his friends. Now, he was here. The other man and the other woman didn’t know each other as well as she and the man knew each other, even though the other man and the other woman had been dating for awhile. The other man had his arms crossed over his chest like he was trying to hide his heart. She looked at the man that she was with. She loved it when he was drunk. That was the only time he said what he wanted. Later, the other woman would tell her that her drunk boyfriend who had been at the strip club looked at her like she was his whole world. And, she thought: You bet."

Don't Date Naked

My most recent piece for Forbes, why advertisers are pulling out of "Dating Naked":

"The recent ad removal was inspired by the Parents Television Council, which describes itself as 'A non-partisan educational organization advocating responsible entertainment,' but exists primarily to rid television programming of seemingly unseemly content."

What You Don't Do Means More Than What You Do Do

Watching a Muay Thai class after mine today, it occurred to me that sometimes it's not about what you do do, but what you don't do. The best guy in the class had a lot of don'ts. He didn't have a conditioning problem. He didn't lose focus. He didn't deviate from his intensity. He didn't wait a second to start the next thing. He didn't half-ass what he did. He didn't have an attitude. He didn't squander himself. Unburdened, he was the best.

What I'm reading

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“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well -- better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words -- in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”

-- George Orwell, 1984

Don't Do It!

Today I was doing some work on the work front: sending out resumes, querying ad firms about copywriting opportunities, sniffing about for freelance writing gigs. I ended up reading some old posts on my Forbes blog, which I wrote after I got downsized. They were mostly about freelancing, and they were really interesting. This one stuck out particularly: "How to Lose Your Job and Not Have a Nervous Breakdown."

I was downsized over the phone. I hung up the phone, then sat on the edge of my bed and examined the floor. I considered that I had not expected things would turn out this way. Yet, they had. Am I going to have another nervous breakdown? I asked myself. I was not. Now, when new challenges arise, I remind myself, At least it’s not a nervous breakdown.

The Starlet

I took this photo at a porn convention in Chicago four years ago.

#MonetizeYourDisease

Today I'm celebrating four years cancer-free! Yes, four years ago today, my oncologist said, "You're cancer-free," and then he kicked me out of his office. It was a great day.

Join me in celebrating by buying a copy of my cancer-inspired short story, "The Tumor."

THE TUMOR is a slipstream short story starring an anthropomorphic tumor, a killer husband, and an invisible woman. Based on the author's true life experience with cancer (she's fine now!), this terrifying tale will grab you by the balls and make you scream.

Into the Wild

I finally had the opportunity to watch "Into the Wild." I guess maybe I was avoiding it. Why would I watch a movie about someone stupid enough to wander into the Alaskan wilds and die from starvation? Help comes from the filmmakers, who happily distort the true story of Chris McCandless into something far more inspirational. A kind of walkabout that makes appealing the idea of renouncing civilization. Instead of becoming some Jesus-like figure, McCandless turns into a walking manifestation of the American spirit: floating from hippie commune to Midwestern fields to the snowy tundra. I suppose the point is not how or why he went into the wild. But that he did at all. Sure, he died because he ... ate something poisonous? ... misread his field guide? ... consumed too many rabbits? At least he went. Most of us, let's face it, never do.

I Get Email

Hai I am [redacted] 32 year old male parson .I many try do to act porn movie. But me not Success please my help . I do any sex (gay,male to shemale,bdsm,dirty sex )act perfectly on camera .
Please guide for me.

INFP

I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test. I am an INFP. That sounds about right.

Things I'm Not Good at in Ladies Kickboxing Class

1. Breathing

2. Remembering the combinations (jab, cross, hook, what?)

3. Holding the pads for the other woman who is trying to kick them

4. Pushups

5. Not sweating

6. Keeping my hands near my chin so I don't get clocked

7. Throwing a punch/kick and putting my hips into it

8. Picking up the really heavy weight balls while wearing boxing gloves

9. Putting on my wraps so they don't fall off in the middle of class

10. Splits

#Florida

🇺🇸

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My Copywriting Portfolio

Last Friday, I put together a copywriting portfolio that I can send to prospect hires. It's called "10 Reasons You Should Hire Me." I think the strongest part is the video referral from the Old Spice Guy.

Forbes Blog Monthly Stats #2

You can read Forbes Blog Monthly Stats #1 here.

The month of June was a real fail whale of a month for my Forbes blog. In May, my total monthly visitors was 98,340. In June, it was 62,925. Shakira's hips don't lie, and neither do those numbers. What went wrong? Let's discuss.

In my last post, I wrote: "In June, I'm aiming to post five times a week, as a way of building my traffic." Instead of doing so, I posted a grand total of seven times out of a possible twenty-two times. Simply put, when the initial posts I wrote didn't "pop," traffic-wise, I got frustrated and wandered off in another direction. Another reason this didn't "work" is that "quality over quantity" is probably the better mantra here, not "quantity over quality." Most of the posts I wrote got crap traffic. The one that got the most traffic was one about Trophy Wife Barbie, which was fun to do. 

Of course, one can always look for things to blame. Blogging is slower in the summer! My mojo was off! I was too busy working on my book proposal! And yet when one blogs, one has no one to blame but oneself, and so I shall bear the burden of my blogging failure.

Image via Ironing Board Collective

A couple days ago, I put together a short list of five posts that I thought could do well traffic-wise. More "interesting ideas" than "churn and burn." The first of those posts will run next week. I think it will be a good one.

Let's hope for a better performance in July.

Final monthly stats:

Pageviews: 80,648

Total Monthly Visitors: 62,925

One-time Visitors: 60,673

Repeat Visitors: 2,252

Comments: 18

Posts: 7

Current Recency Score: for some reason my recency score isn't appearing on my dashboard

So come back next month and see if I can get quality over quantity to get this thing going again.

Different Jobs to Which I Have Applied Lately

Social media manager

Copywriter

Executive producer

Publicist

Reporter

(Interested in hiring me? Check out my LinkedIn and email me.)

Things I Learned at Muay Thai Today

1. My upper body strength is hell.

2. I do better when I try and kick the boxing head gear off the top of the stand than when I'm trying to kick the air.

3. Those walking lunges are tiring.

4. I have about 25 minutes of go before I think: Oh, no.

5. I really, really like it, mostly because it's physically and mentally challenging.

6. My hips are tight.

7. Most of the other people at the gym are men. But not all of them.

8. If I go to ladies kickboxing class on Thursday night, I will get better faster.

9. Boxing is fun!

10. Working up a good sweat is a good thing.

Plants

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See this Instagram photo by @susannahbreslin

I planted these pots this weekend. I went to Home Depot, and I asked the plant expert what to get, and I picked out five plants and five pots. I also got some potting soil and some Miracle-Gro. At home, I put some dirt in the pots, and then the plants in the pots, and then some more dirt around the plants in the pots. Then I walked around for a while and decided where I wanted to put them. Then I watered the plants in the pots. I got dirt everywhere, including on my knees, but my husband vacuumed it up for me. After that, it rained.