PSA: Know Your Bank

Today, I lost my wallet. Walking from my partner's car to the yoga studio we were testing out (yoga-venture post forthcoming), it somehow disappeared. I retraced my steps and couldn't find it anywhere, in the car, on the sidewalk or in the yoga studio. No dice. My pal retraced our steps too and found nothing.

So I took the first 20 or 30 minutes of the yoga class calling all my banks and credit card companies, cancelling all my cards.

And the lesson of all of this? Store your banking phone numbers in your contacts! You never know when you'll lose your wallet (or if someone will steal it). So you've got to hope for the best, and prepare for the worst... The faster you get the cards shut down, the less likely you are to have your money stolen.


My story has a happy, goodness-of-man-affirming ending. Someone found my wallet in the street and brought it to the police station. Thank goodness! But it's very clear how easily that situation could have gone differently... So semper paratus!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

PSA: People Talk

Communicate early. Communicate often. Right?

Well, apparently not... But today's beef is a little different from the sins of omission and lying I've recently touched on. Lately, I've been hearing a lot of people arguing against open communication. People still believe that you can bottle stuff up and make it go away, that you can control the message. The whole thing makes me a little irate.

I'll cede that there's a time and a place for everything. But beyond matters of tact, I've pretty much had it with people arguing to control communication. You don't get to dictate who other people in your life chose to speak to!

It's just not realistic. People talk. It's normal. You should expect people to talk -- about you, your business, your personal matters, everything. If you can't handle this fact, you could try not to do anything worth talking about, or you could move to the woods and stop interacting with people. But even then, people will probably talk about the crazy hermit that lives down that road...

People try to control information for a couple reasons:

• Embarrassment / humiliation / shame;
• Pain / punishment;
• Etiquette / propriety.
  

But just because you don't want to talk about something, doesn't mean it isn't important to others. Getting angry with people for speaking about something you've done is pretty stupid too. The "I don't understand why he/she had to know" line is outright ridiculous.

This might sound shocking, but why not try actually getting in front of an issue, instead of freaking out when other people talk about it? You can tell your own story when you're the one doing the telling... Just a little food for thought.

PSA: The Kindness of Truth

Recently, someone I care about hurt someone else I care about. I'll keep the details for that novel I'll write someday. But I at the center of all this hurt was the intention to do no harm and a whole lot of lies to spare a person pain.

In reflecting on the situation and what led up to it, I'll just say this as a public service announcement to all you regular people out there trying to do the right thing:

Honesty is the best policy for a reason. It can seem kinder to keep hurtful things to yourself, but remember: trust betrayed is the worst kind of hurt. Beyond the immediate feeling of betrayal, you damage the person's ability to trust you again, to trust others and to his / her judgment. It's three or four times the pain you would have caused by simply being honest.

Yes, truth is the kinder route. But if that's not enough of a reason to be honest, consider the obvious: it's a whole lot easier to remember the truth than the little lies that build up.

Be kind; tell the truth.


You can find the "Honesty Jar" image in protactinium's flickr stream.

PSA: Crosswalk Safety

When it's raining out, it's probably not a good idea to walk in front of moving traffic in the hopes that they'll stop for you.

When it's raining out. Visibility is bad. Ask yourself, can this driver see me? Can the driver even see the crosswalk?

When it's raining out. It takes longer for a vehicle stop. Stepping into a crosswalk twenty feet in front of a car that's moving at 30 miles an hour isn't smart regardless of how you do the math.

Whether or not it's raining, it's probably not a good idea to just decide you're going to walk in front of a moving vehicle a) if you haven't made eye contact with the driver b) if the crosswalk isn't marked or c) driving conditions are less than ideal.

You're life is probably more important than being right. But I suppose that's something you have to ask yourself.

Episodes of a Soap Opera and PSAs

I've struggled with format for this blog for a long time. I am so many things - a social media practitioner, a consultant, a daughter, a yogi, etc. - it's hard to really capture all of that in a way that is meaningful to someone who would be interested in tales from the yoga or my thoughts on social media, but maybe not both.

So to structure my thoughts around some of these things, I'm introducing two different features to this blog: episodes and PSAs.

Episodes is more of a concept for telling random stories. We like to think of life as a timeline, but often times it's specific conversations or timing around a series of events that stands out as meaningful. That is what episodes is for.

PSAs - public service announcements - are typically ad spots that are run pro bono for a cause (think ACS or Red Cross). At Sandying, PSAs will be snarky, ranting commentary for the betterment of others. Basically for amusement, I'll be telling folks how to not be tools (or D-Bags) in everyday life.

I'll still be writing about social media, marketing, and other such topics. However, I will likely be moving that sort of content to the Media Awaken blog in the coming weeks -- I'm still trying to decide whether I should cross post everything here (so that this blog remains a central place for my content). If you have any suggestions on that, please share! I'm not sure what makes the most sense.