Note to Flipside: 12/22/23
A typo billows black smoke
You’re a Cordwainer, applying coconut oil to a shoe of Cordovan leather. Shaping the last, fashioning the uppers, plying the soles. Your lamp glows on the drafted pattern, your shears glint tellingly. Your craftsmanship is top notch, damn it if your shoes will ever require repair by the Cobbler, or his dimwitted son half napping in your market stall.
I’m a slide deck designer, weekends and eves and flights from coast to coast, creating in my canvas. Drafting copy, pulling images, moving letters all around. Each slide holds its own story, each picture must snap to attention. Midjourney, Flim, Sora and less and less Unsplash, and it just burns my ass if I must resort to a Google search. I am a tinter. I use colors. I use fonts. My skill is storytelling and my medium is the deck.
You. You’re a Blacksmith. You trade in pots and pans, you’re known for the pinpoint on your sewing needles. You’re warmed by the forge. Your ears rattle with bang clank bang clank. You shape, form, join; you prefer brass over copper and iron over bronze. Few realize your commercial real estate acumen when you place your shop right smack damn in the center of the village.
Me. I’m a writer. I’m an editor. I strike with suggestions, comments, and full on redrafts. Every. single. word. counts. I pull from the pitter pat of the paragraph. I’ll alliterate illustratively. A typo billows black smoke; a miscalculation is one cockroach indicating others are near. I bury easter eggs. I thicken plots. Reading is practice. Getting started is often a cold engine in winter’s chill, but once rolling the words purr like a cat, eyes drooping in the warmth of window-ledge sunlight.
You make cheese, and that’s more than alright. You live in Marshland Duck Boots and OshKosh overalls, and wear a bouffant cap instead of a hairnet. You have a palette that can tell the history of the cheese from first bite. You mix your curds in a massive industrial vat, eyeballing the squeak of the overhead mixer. You heat off whey protein. You mold, you dry, you age. You tend to your livestock, the moo of cows at 5 AM. You are a scientist who smells of esrom.
I am a visionary team builder. I blaze with stories. I seek to direct, I eagle, I push and pull. My job is to raise money, and to bring people close. To sell sell sell. Sell to new talent, sell to current talent, sell to potential customers, sell to partners. I gentle yell. I’m maybe on the spectrum. I have trouble being second, like when I share workspace with my wife-as-landlord who punishes me like my Dad did when he coached me in 4th grade little league.
Left field, Dad shouted while pointing into the vast, scary empty space behind the 3rd base bag, and don’t pick the dandelions!