Note to self: Check, always check.

This morning I felt like sending a snippy superior message to someone advertising greeting cards. They’d made a card – aimed at gay boys and girls – with the text saying something like Recycle. Reuse. Repurpose. Rihanna.

Which is funny. Except all I could see was the ‘mistake’ in the spelling of her name.  Bloody hell, they can’t even get her name right, what is wrong with young people these days…  I’m ancient, you see, and haven’t listened to contemporary music since 1992. I have heard of Rihanna but if she knocked at my front door, I wouldn’t know who she was. I don’t know any of her songs.

Anyway, a small voice said Folks get creative with spelling nowadays; let’s just check if that’s not how she does spell her name … Glad I did. Had I not, this would be a snooty blog about people ruining good jokes by bad spelling. And I would have looked stupid.

 

 

 

 

 

So you’re passionate? Yawn…

If I need someone to do something for me, on a professional level, I mean, I don’t care how they feel about it. I don’t care whether they bounce out of bed like a jack-in-a-box at 6 am to do it, or not. I care about the quality of work they do and whether they deliver, and deliver on time. They don’t have to love what they do. They sure as hell have to do it well.

We live in a world where people claim to be passionate about working in call centres – “I’m passionate about customer service!!!” Really? You lie.

Personal passions can shift and meander; mine sure have, although they always revolve around storytelling in one way or another, whether it’s visual storytelling or creating narrative using language.

I’m not going to sell you my writing or drawing services cos I feel passionate about doing these things, although I really do. Most of the time. Nearly all the time, actually, but that’s beside the point. I may not feel fire in my belly for a project, but I care about doing the best job on it I can.  If you’re hiring me, that’s what you want to be assured of.

I’m sick of hearing how passionate people are about their thing. Can’t we simply be dedicated, meticulous and committed to quality? Passion once belonged in the bedroom. Time to put it back.