Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Here is one way to begin what is likely to be an unpleasant conversation. It lessens the unpleasantness and moves toward a more productive conversation. Let’s begin with, “John, I am upset.” (Substitute the other person’s name for John. That was the most alias of names I could find.) There, said the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A text without a context is a pretext. Know the audience. Sorry, these are old basics but they still apply. “Do you know who I am?” That question is a biting indictment of a person who approaches another in ignorance and starts talking in grand fashion about what might be grand ideas, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The edge is that area between the center of two places. Things are different at the edge. Try to remember the difference. I recently spent a few of strenuous days cleaning a fence row. A fence row comprises the ground a couple feet each side of a fence. In my case, the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Almost anyone can gather the material. Organizing it or creating a story from it, however, appears to be a rare yet valuable skill. We have lots of information. Go to Wikipedia. Download PDFs of the pages. Concatenate the pages. There it is. Go to a search engine. Find a dozen hits. Copy […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some persons “think out loud.” This is okay only when done properly. Some persons “think out loud.” They state a list of ideas quickly. This is a rough draft spoken instead of jotted on paper. The ideas are only partially formed and should be worked and reworked until they make sense. That […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Take great caution when you enter an endeavor with someone who has far more experience than you. There are occasions in life when we enter a financial agreement in a terribly unbalanced relationship. One example: a parent dies. I am arranging the funeral, i.e., I am paying for it. I go to […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An age-old question that won’t seem to go away. Odd how things come around. I keep a file with ideas for blog posts. I jotted some notes for this post about six months ago. I was perusing that file and noticed this. While the context of that note jotting months ago was […]

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