[Written on Aug 8]
When I talked with one of my editors last week, we discussed how one core aspect of Real Joe is about reflection. I used the word ‘introspection’ as an alternate but he preferred ‘reflection’ because reflection can be done publicly. It later occurred to me that that’s what I was doing with my sons last year with Father’s Notes to Himself, emailing them snippets from my journal.
A friend once told me, “When it was just me and Jesus, I got drunk.” So this idea of public weblogs, small groups of guys letting each other ‘listen in’ on their reflections, could be helpful. So I guess I better start modeling it on a more regular basis and get a Blogger Weblog going.
Also, I read in Bill Alexander’s A Man’s Book of the Spirit for Aug 10 about the complementarity between solitude and community. And it further crystalized a bit for me what Joe needs to be about… wants to be about?
The Cafe Utne byline is: A place in cyberspace where ideas and community intersect. So how could a Real Joe byline convey this. “A bunch of regular guys having fun together learning how to apply the arts of solitude and reflection to everyday life.” Not exactly catchy. The Motley Fool’s mission: educate, enrich, amuse. I like that. It’s simple.
If we were to have a similar list of verbs, what would they be? Substitute ‘enlighten’ for ‘enrich’ I guess. “Educate, enlighten, amuse.” But ‘enlighten’ has such a new agey connotation. The byline I’ve been using on the demo site is “Important stuff. Ordinary guys.” Maybe I should just add something about ‘no BS’ or ‘straight talk’ or ‘plain language’. How about “Plain talk”? Yeah, that’s it:
“Important stuff. Plain talk. Ordinary guys.”
It’s not yet a mission statement. More of marketing-type byline. It’ll do for now.