Several months ago, one of my favorite clients began a conversation with a sentence I hate: “I’ve got a proposition for you.”
He asked me to come to his lovely faraway city to give a little talk to a small group of professionals about how blogging could help keep diarrhea germies out of kids’ dinner plates. Although I have plenty of blogging experience on the topic and have worked with enough lawyers and industry professionals to know the hows and whys of it, I really really REALLY did not want to do this.
I have an anxiety disorder and am about one step away from agoraphobic. I took up this lovely work at home life because I’m in love with pajamas. Phrases like corporate attire and business travel are supposed to be distant painful memories. Anyone but me would be thrilled at the opportunity. Networking, more business, great exposure. Yet the mere thought of getting on a plane and spending two days away from home gave me hives.
“I’ll do it,” I typed back… all the while thinking to myself, “I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I will.”
Then I got mono. And I quit smoking. I’m not quite as energetic as I was several months ago, and I’m certainly not very cheerful. While I’ve never backed out of a commitment to a client, I was very tempted many times over the past month to call my client up and open with another phrase I hate: “I regret to inform you…”
A few days ago I got an email from a lady whose little boy died from eating a hamburger. This woman lives in another country and has absolutely no connection to my client or this itty bitty conference. She simply shares the common thread of being the worst kind of victim to the issue I’m here to speak on today. Here is an excerpt from her letter, which I’m posting with her permission:
“… I have seen your passion for the need for better regulation within the United States and hope that your empathy extends to me globally. My son [name removed for confidentiality] died needlessly less than one year ago, and yet he is already nothing more than a statistic. To our government he has no name, but I hold his favorite teddy and weep and whisper my apologies into the air to whatever God may be listening. I could not protect my own child from death.”
This woman found me from a blog post I’d written. She’d read someplace that I do a lot of volunteer work and wanted to know if I would be willing to create a memorial website for her son and help her learn to blog so she could spread the word, in hopes that her son’s death would not be in vain.
As I got on the plane yesterday, I thought of this woman and her little boy. I thought about the many other little kids who go through painful kidney failure — many die — all because of the poison in our food supply coupled with careless meal preparation and bad hygiene habits. My panic attacks seemed small in comparison. If my little bit of knowledge about blogging can help keep even one kid off a dialysis machine, who am I not to want to sacrifice my pajamas?
In a few hours I give my little speech. But I realize now, this talk I’m giving probably isn’t the biggest reason I’m here. Last night at the hotel, half a dozen men gathered around me in their expensive suits and watched me write a blog post. My client said, “Watch her!” in a tone that connoted some sort of genius-level intelligence or superpower, simply because I could type into a little box and hit “publish” — and I had to laugh. Within a few hours, after making a call to a wizard-like blog developer, they were all up and running. The hotel lobby looked like a mini-geek convention, with “Hey, check this out!” being shouted across the room every few minutes, and everyone dashing over to watch with awe as a new photo was uploaded or a new hyperlink was created. That’s what this is all about. This is why I’m here — not just to talk about it, but to help it happen.
When the others bagged their laptops and went out for drinks, I stayed behind to catch up on my favorite blogs and to get some much needed sleep. As I was laying in bed, I thought about why we write, why we blog, why we do anything at all. Whether it’s to help someone else, to make a difference, to tame those insomniac muses of ours… I hope it’s for some bigger purpose than a paycheck. I’m a well-paid blogger, but I certainly don’t do it just for the money. Do you?
