Ringo the Zen Master

Ringo, seems like he has it all together. He knows exactly what he wants in life - food, attention, sleep, faces and hands to lick, occasional walks so he can pee and dump (and occassionally combine the dump with snack of the same) and a consistent flow of dog butts to smell. And he goes after it without any apology or hesitation. There is none of the human genuflection and whining about what should be doing with my life, I am too busy, I owe to much money, I am not good looking enough.

It's not that Ringo gets everything that he wants. He hears "no Ringo" all day but it doesn't send him into a downward, whoa is me spiral of depression. He moves on to the next moment when he might hear yes. He doesn't base his current actions on past events, or worry about the future for which he has no control. All that matters to him is solving the present.

Screw Stephen Covey, Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins. Ringo is my zen master.

Online Persona

There are lots of options for creating your persona in the Internet age. The one I am going for is the fitness obsessed, witty geek. I am not sure if this is exactly who I am but that's what I want others to perceive.

The methods of delivering this message are:

The blog - www.themerrilllife.blogspot.com. Given the narrow focus of my posts, and the sporadic nature of them, there isn't a huge audience. This aint no white people blog yet. Considerations: do I open up with personal, private details about my life to build the persona?

Facebook/Linked In - I still don't get this phenomena yet. I played the game - add as many people to my friend list as possible - but it's kind of ended there. Other then Scrabulous.

Twitter (merrillfr) - I am loving this so far. It is the perfect solution for someone who gets bored at long conversations and would prefer exchanging one sentence quips. Of course a lot of people are not the best quippers - unless discussing how busy they are is considered riveting.

Podcast - My podcast is now approaching 100 downloads a week. Nothing Nielsen worthy yet but I think this means the audience is more then just friends. The personality hasn't really been injected in it yet; I haven't opened up myself Howard Stern style yet. And I don't know if that would even be interesting.


The challenge is now how to link all the techniques above to become famous. Because, in reality, that is the goal.