What power do words have to affect others? And how can written words lead to good conversations?
The fourth in a starting series of five posts, this post introduces you to the section of my site focusing on words.
From Words to Conversation
Once, thousands of miles from home on a business trip, I was given a stranger’s office to use for the day as they were out of town. Being a curious sort, I was looking at the small bits of wisdom printed out and posted on their corkboard while waiting on a friend. Surprisingly, I found a small essay I had written long before on CompuServe had been printed out and pinned to the board.
I never did meet that person or find out how my words had touched them enough to save and display. But it was the first time that I truly realized that my words thrown out into the ether could touch another and help them. It was a very humbling experience, and it showed me that my words can help others.
In determining how much of myself I would share on this site and which interests to share, I sat and drew a number of mindmaps looking for the connecting fibers between my interests. I make systems talk to each other by day, have investigated computer crimes by night, photographed natural wonders when I can and I capture the moments in amazing people’s lives at every possible opportunity.
And as these things came together I found the connecting thread was communication. Sometimes i was more deeply involved in the medium, and other times I was focusing on the message itself, but always it seemed that I was either enabling other people to move their ideas, or spurring my own into action to get the right message to the right person in the right way and at the right time!
So this is how JamesCrossman.com came to have such an eclectic collection of topics, and with this sort of an open essay area, it can reach out into even broader areas. Words convey information, yes, but when it flows back and forth between people then the words become something much more interesting.
They become a conversation.
One of my goals for this year is to have a conversation woth someone interesting every day of the year. Would you consider helping me on that goal? Let’s talk. Better yet, let’s have a long and rambling conversation that communicates on a hundred different ttopics and spills out from this site, to your sites, and maybe over an adult beverage somewhere. What do you say?
What is your relationship to words? What is the best sort of conversation in your opinion?
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