Gardening and Raising Children – There’s a little bit of selfishness in all of us but it’s something that gets a bit complicated when raising kids. Who wants to feel like they are not needed anymore? No one of course, but letting a child go and live his or her life is the epitome of becoming a bit more irrelevant.

There is a great pride a parent takes in watching our words, motions and even our facial expressions reflected in this wonderful person who we’ve watched grow from a helpless infant to a confident adult.

I am having great difficulty finding my own purpose as I watch my son find his. I feel like an actor whose whole life has been a television series: a comedy, a drama, and a love story. So what’s left of this actor?

All my talents and ideas seem raw and ready for me to see the next path that I’m supposed to take but I’m feeling a lot of melancholy looking back. I am happy to say I savored every moment like it was the most incredible buffet but it went so fast, to ever be able to fully enjoy it, I find myself looking back through pages, reading the beginning, not questioning or fretting just reflecting.

I started this post while tending to an overgrown winter garden, a canvas of sorts, much like the children we raise. I watch the same story unfold as nature gives us all the inspiration we need to live extraordinary lives.

Selfishness is a common trait in the garden as well as our lives. You watch the weeds that bind other plants, clutter and block the light; the sunflower even disperses a chemical with its seeds that stops other seeds from germinating.

I am the mediator, I go in and remove obstacles, plant the garden the way I see fit but in the end, it grows to be its own despite the gardener. 

The child grows out of the garden, out of all our ideas, ideals and expectations. They become adults despite us, they find their path and their place in this world. We can remove some of the obstacles but the main goal for any parent is to raise their child to find their own garden. 

We are all selfish gardeners, planting seeds, fertilizing soil and loving every bit of the flowers we are lucky to enjoy. 

Spring-Garden Refresh – Its spring in a few days and I’m excited about putting out my plants. Every year it is a ritual and there are so many reasons for it and many directly relate to the trials of a creative and not-so creative life.

One particular plant is a seventeen year old lemon tree and that’s just an estimate-it’s probably a little older. It started as a seed, as my exwife told me “you can’t grow lemons in Texas”. 

It’s never produced a lemon and only a handful of flowers in more than a decade. I’m hopeful every year but lack of fruit is the difference between growing from seed and growing a store-bought plant, which is a grafted stock from an existing plant, but that’s science and botany and another story to tell.

Last summer was probably it’s most spectacular year, full and desperate to fruit. This winter it showed my neglect with a lack of leaves and dried up broken stems. It sinks in the pot, lays over looking for bits of light but there is a spark in it, a life force that is ready for the summer.

I dragged it outside and watered it, even feed it. I can’t fix the winter or make up for shortcomings in care but I can make this next summer the most spectacular and I will. 

I’ve always found hope in watching a dormant plant be born again in spring. Bits of green adorn ash colored limbs as if it were rising from the dead. During a very dark time in my life, the garden was a place for me to watch spring make everything new, every spring of new growth was like hope.

In our lives, there is always winter, a time where we crawl deep inside ourselves and find strength mingled with weakness, we throw off our broken dying limbs that don’t serve us anymore and we search for that green, that youth that hides in each of us.

This year, I’ve become a bit more realistic, there are less plants that I held over-the sambuc Jasmine which is such an easy plant as it long as it doesn’t get too cold and it rewards you with a wonderful fragrance that soothes and relaxes me in the spring.

Some plants brighten up the first day they feel the warmth but others are stubborn, they hold on to their dark and pensive state, the Occatillo, a favorite plant of mine because of its dramatic spiny disposition, it is gray, hard and thorny. I’m not sure if it’s alive or dead but you learn patience and realizing nature is on its own schedule, not yours.

It’s a great responsibility to take plants through the winter and I will be honest, I loose more than I keep. Winter is my introspective time, I don’t get the excitement and feeling of hope like I do in spring, maybe it’s the lack of light but I don’t take the responsibility of taking care of plants lightly.

Plants take you out of yourself, much like pets and children, it’s not about you or what you feel like doing. My manic state tends to over buy plants and my opposite state tends to give up but in the end I have plants with strong roots that can take the winter and still recover in the spring.

Much like humanity, not all of us will be the same after winter, some of us will be stronger, some of us will change our path, some of us will want to give up but as long as winter lays itself down for spring, there is hope. 

Sometimes hope is as simple as putting your plants out in the spring.

1. Not all sharing is equal: regardless of your intention.
What you share will not suit everyone’s need or interest. Making an impact starts with honest interaction followed by useful data for mutual benefit.
If you share without real interaction and sincere interest in viewers you become the blur of words and pix the reader learns to avoid.

2. You can’t fake social. 
Social media requires one important factor; you must really be social. People need to know you are interested in their stuff as well as your own. Drive-by social media will get you quickly ignored. Find people with like interests or things that inspire you and build relationships that are based on mutual respect and sharing.

3. Give them something to do. 
Okay, you’ve got their attention, now what? Get them to respond, to engage or go somewhere. This is where pinterest, Facebook and tumblr, to name just a few, allow you to find something than repost it sharing it with others, they find your website, your information or something they need to know and the reason you started sharing in the first place.

4. Engagement is not an option-it’s a necessary goal. 
Now you have started a relationship, you need to engage your readers, be available, answer questions or expand on information you’ve shared. Engagement shows that you are not just sharing information you stand behind the ideas, you can support them with knowledge and useful expertise.

 5. Make goals and learn how to reach them. 
You need to share with a purpose. Have a clear vision of what you want your audience to do and a formula for what a successful campaign would equal whether in new connections, reposts and retweets or amount of response and engagement.

 6. Ask the experts-learn from others’ experiences. 
You’ve been growing a following on various platforms. Now it’s time to add to the momentum, see why others who are leaders in social media have larger engaged following-it’s time to take your sharing to the next level-learn from the professionals that have the following and solid content to prove it.

 7. There are no shortcuts; it takes time, work and content. 
In a society wanting everything now, there is no shortcut to creating a lasting impression; it takes many hours of patience and perseverance.

 8. Don’t disappear- stay focused and engaged so your audience will. You’ve done all the work, you’ve taken the time and effort now you must keep yourself and your audience engaged. Don’t disappear and at the same time don’t keep tweeting the same old thing, give them something new, something interesting and keep them engaged.

 9. Social media is a two-way street, retweet and mean it.
A relationship requires give and take. If you only show and tell your own story no one is going to share theirs or yours with anyone, you need to work with your audience and offer them the same respect and appreciation for their thoughts, stories and products.

 10. Don’t cry wolf. Don’t offer false information, thoughts and ideas that are pointless, exaggerated information-make a good first impression and make sure your audience knows your not only going to be there but that they can count on your perspective and trusted information.

Here is just a small list of the experts that have impressed me with their knowledge of social media and wealth of content. These are specific to the creative side of social media.

https://www.artpromotivate.com- a great site for artists-Graham Matthews is the owner and does a wonderful job of connecting and offering artists valuable information. He’s also a gifted artist https://plus.google.com/101360643544552502915/posts.

Jennifer Mattern from All Indie Writers https://allindiewriters.com It’s a great place for lots of information on writers, publishing, blogs, etc.

https://www.angelikafineart.com- a wonderful artist I found on twitter who has so much information to share and a great following.

Let me know if this post was helpful. It’s still a work in progress but social media and marketing in general is a knowledge that grows and adapts in a rapidly changing landscape.

Valentines from a Starbucks – Valentines evening at a starbucks, a sky darkening with no plans for the evening, just another day for a single person.

Still, I love Valentines day, even if I’m not part of it. One day that you say something a little special, be a little more kind to that special someone, even if corporations can make a profit from it, I’m okay with it.

The truth, I’d be happy to buy the right woman a gift but I would hope she wouldn’t need or expect one on a specific day. I believe we need to act this way year round and because we don’t, we have to have a day to remind us.

In my opinion, kindness and showing someone how much you appreciate them shouldn’t be limited and if it is, one night of celebrating isn’t going to make a relationship any more special.

So I sit here, hoping this post does not sound too melancholy, I am comfortable with being alone, it is by choice as I wait for the right person to start a new relationship.

I believe timing is everything and I am enlarging my scope of social interaction and getting more comfortable with every outing. I believe my soul’s complement is sitting at another coffee shop thinking the same as I am tonight.

The sky outside is deepening blue contrasting with the yellow lights of local shops and cars passing by. The workforce is hustling home for evening festivities and I am still-sipping a cup of coffee and taking it all in.

It’ a strange feeling when time is not marching behind us keeping us on a schedule. Time is more fluid, it’s a little uncomfortable as it moves without borders of weekend or end of workday-my workday never ends and the week is seamless with weekends.

It’s easy to become disconnected from the world and that’s why I am continuing to enlarge my social circle. It can be a bit intimidating as you watch time fly by-it is the constant of the ocean tide-adding and subtracting with each surge.

I am slowly growing in my scope of what the future looks like and it has made me feel more present in the moment.

I guess it’s appropriate to be sitting here alone, watching the moment unfold at a starbucks, waiting for no one special who could be that special one. With more confidence than I have ever felt, I wait for that possibility of the future, someone that makes an unexpected stop at a coffee shop on valentines day.