Reading list for being an adult.  I just bought Making Ideas Happen (as opposed to Getting Things Done which is still sitting on my Amazon wishlist. Do I really want to get “things” done—no. I want to make ideas happen. Specificity: +1). This is the next in a short line of business and entrepreneurial books I have purchased in the past six or seven months. I started with Rework while I was in Singapore working for a small business. That book made everything and anything seem possible. I read Baked In shortly afterward. That one’s about how stories and ideas can really sell products. At that point I was ready to abandon everything and throw myself into advertising which seems to be one of the last creative mass media frontiers (Do I even need to cite the Old Spice man commercials here?).  Well, for now I have resolved myself to a humble path of fiction writing and working at home. I’m concerned about morality in the post-God, anonymous Internet age, especially that of young males. I sometimes feel like I should be a priest or a Promise Keeper—but I’m an atheist so that doesn’t wash. Therefore I’m impressed by people like James Kaelan who has a novel out by Flatmancrooked. He  and the press searched for ways to make the physical book itself environmentally sustainable and is promoting it through a bicycle book tour. And Ken Baumann the actor and writer who’s taking advantage of today’s multi-tasking society by using his position as a TV actor (Secret Life of the American Teenager) to start a small press to publish experimental literature and (at the same time) contributing to the society of people trying to end the civil rights crimes in Africa (check out The Enough Moment, an anthology he’ll have an essay in). Ken’s not even 21 years old yet.  Or Alex Bogusky, the co-author of Baked-In, who some would call the Elvis of advertising (his firm did the recent BK & Dominos Pizza campaigns.) He left advertising earlier this year, at the top of his game, to pursue what I would call the ideal. Read this blog post by him where he decides to smell the roses. And the post before that is about how advertisers should NEVER target children because it’s immoral. Wow. He’s a role model coming out of a field that is not known for its integrity. (Compare that to John Edwards who I had a ton of respect for in 2004 and who now I cannot stomach. Or Mel Gibson. Or Tiger Woods. Or…) James Kaelan and Alex Bogusky are both working on the plane that I want to be working within. That combination of creative aspirations and a desire to work towards good.  Do I have any clue what I’m doing? No. But I have an idea of where I want to go.  (PS Rework is really good and I recommend it to everyone with a job.)

Reading list for being an adult. 

I just bought Making Ideas Happen (as opposed to Getting Things Done which is still sitting on my Amazon wishlist. Do I really want to get “things” done—no. I want to make ideas happen. Specificity: +1). This is the next in a short line of business and entrepreneurial books I have purchased in the past six or seven months. I started with Rework while I was in Singapore working for a small business. That book made everything and anything seem possible. I read Baked In shortly afterward. That one’s about how stories and ideas can really sell products. At that point I was ready to abandon everything and throw myself into advertising which seems to be one of the last creative mass media frontiers (Do I even need to cite the Old Spice man commercials here?). 

Well, for now I have resolved myself to a humble path of fiction writing and working at home. I’m concerned about morality in the post-God, anonymous Internet age, especially that of young males. I sometimes feel like I should be a priest or a Promise Keeper—but I’m an atheist so that doesn’t wash.

Therefore I’m impressed by people like James Kaelan who has a novel out by Flatmancrooked. He  and the press searched for ways to make the physical book itself environmentally sustainable and is promoting it through a bicycle book tour.

And Ken Baumann the actor and writer who’s taking advantage of today’s multi-tasking society by using his position as a TV actor (Secret Life of the American Teenager) to start a small press to publish experimental literature and (at the same time) contributing to the society of people trying to end the civil rights crimes in Africa (check out The Enough Moment, an anthology he’ll have an essay in). Ken’s not even 21 years old yet. 

Or Alex Bogusky, the co-author of Baked-In, who some would call the Elvis of advertising (his firm did the recent BK & Dominos Pizza campaigns.) He left advertising earlier this year, at the top of his game, to pursue what I would call the ideal. Read this blog post by him where he decides to smell the roses. And the post before that is about how advertisers should NEVER target children because it’s immoral. Wow. He’s a role model coming out of a field that is not known for its integrity. (Compare that to John Edwards who I had a ton of respect for in 2004 and who now I cannot stomach. Or Mel Gibson. Or Tiger Woods. Or…)

James Kaelan and Alex Bogusky are both working on the plane that I want to be working within. That combination of creative aspirations and a desire to work towards good. 

Do I have any clue what I’m doing? No. But I have an idea of where I want to go. 

(PS Rework is really good and I recommend it to everyone with a job.)

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