Becky Robinson's Blog, page 38

How Do You Tap Into Your Courage?

This week we’re celebrating the launch of The Courage Way, written by Shelly L. Francis on behalf of The Center for Courage & Renewal. It also happens to be our 100th book launch, which is a pretty exciting milestone!

We’ve enjoyed working with Shelly and catching her vision for living and leading with courage and integrity. We all have situations where we feel the urge to do the right thing, no matter how hard it is. The challenge is knowing how to tap into our courage in those moments when we need it most. How do we persevere, taking small steps day in and day out to create and sustain organizations where trust, integrity, and authenticity can flourish?

If we are to make this world a better place, we need a lot of leaders who are willing and able to walk this way for the long haul. That’s where this book comes in.

The Courage Way

Leadership demands courage. You have to make good decisions while balancing inevitable tensions and knowing when to take risks. You need to keep your values in sight regardless of the pressures around you. At its core, leadership is a daily, ongoing practice, a journey toward becoming your best self and inviting others to do the same.

And that’s where The Courage Way comes in. It’s a guide to leadership that shows how to access and draw upon courage in all that you do. It has its roots in the work of Parker J. Palmer, who in fifty years of teaching, speaking, and writing has explored the human spirit–what he has called “the inner landscape”–and its role in life and leadership.

Shelly L. Francis identifies key ingredients needed to cultivate courage, the most fundamental being trust–in ourselves and in each other. She describes how to build trust through the Center for Courage & Renewal’s Circle of Trust approach, centered around eleven “touchstones,” poetic and practical operating guidelines for holding the meaningful conversations vital to trust building. Each chapter features true stories of how leaders have overcome challenges and strengthened their organizations through touchstones such as “Extend invitation, not demand”; “No fixing, saving, advising, or correcting”; and “When the going gets rough, turn to wonder.”

This graceful and inspiring book is a guide to courageous leadership and a journey of self-discovery. As Francis writes:

Courage is not only in you—it is you. In your moments of courage, you meet your true self.

Meet the Author

Shelly L. Francis is the marketing and communications director at the Center for Courage & Renewal, a nonprofit organization that works to create a more just, compassionate, and healthy world by nurturing personal and professional integrity and the courage to act on it. Founded in 1997 by author, activist, and educator Parker J. Palmer, the Center’s approach was initially created to renew and sustain educators, and today brings the Circle of Trust® approach to individuals, organizations, and communities across a range of professions. Through its network of nearly three hundred Courage & Renewal facilitators across the globe, the Center offers online resources and in-person retreats and programs, including facilitator-led retreats, workshops, team coaching, customized consulting, speaking presentations, and program series.

Before coming to the Center in 2012, Shelly directed trade marketing and publicity for multi-media publisher Sounds True, Inc. Her career has spanned international program management, web design, corporate communications, trade journals, and software manuals. The common thread throughout her career has been bringing to light best-kept secrets — technology, services, resources, ideas — while bringing people together to facilitate collective impact and good work.

Praise for the Book

“The Courage Way will nourish that part of you that cares deeply about the world. A soulful approach for helping you harness your inner strength to become the kind of leader the world needs now—in every dimension of your life.” 

—Jono Fisher, founder of WakeUpProject.com

“This is the book that won’t claim to change your life, which is exactly why you can trust that it probably will. What you will find in these pages is no less than the technology to tune into your true self—your real intuitions and outrage and intelligence—and a sense of how to show up in community with that revitalized understanding of your own power.”

—Courtney E. Martin, author of The New Better Off

“The Courage Way gives us a much-needed social technology for self-expression and authentic relationships. With intimate leadership stories, it shows how integrating purpose and cultivating community can be a powerful catalyst for change.”

—Aaron Hurst, author of The Purpose Economy and Fast Company’s Purposeful CEO series

“Everyone should read this book. The Courage Way is a powerful tonic for our challenging times. Keep it close at hand so you can savor its life-giving music again and again.”

—Dr. Gloria J. Burgess, author of Dare to Wear Your Soul on the Outside, Pass It On!, and Flawless Leadership

Learn More

Visit CourageWay.org to learn more and download a sample chapter.
Buy your copy the book, or share a review of it, on Amazon.
Watch the webinar to learn more about accessing courage in every aspect of life.

P.S. If your book is among the 100 books we’ve launched over the past six years, THANK YOU for the privilege of partnering with you! If you haven’t launched a book with us but would like to, send us an email and we’ll be in touch!

Are You Getting the Most Out of Goodreads?

You probably know of Goodreads as a great place to find books or track your reading, but did you know it also has a host of other benefits for authors and book editors? It’s a great place to build your brand, connect with thousands of other readers and authors, and increase the number of readers and reviews.

Joining the Author Program is free; the rest takes a small investment of time — but the payoff is exponential. Here are three specific ways Goodreads can help you as an author.

Build Your Platform

First things first: create an author profile with your headshot and bio. Make it personal — but also be sure to include any previous literary awards or accomplishments, as well as your published book titles. You can (and should) also add your personal website or blog, your Twitter handle, the top 3 genres that you write about, videos (book trailers, behind-the-scenes, etc), your own bookshelves and reading challenge updates, and of course, every book you have published or edited (including ebooks).

This information will not only help maintain continuity for your brand across platforms, but more importantly, it also gives readers the chance to know more about you personally. Anyone who’s ever looked at the back cover (or inside flap) for biographical information about the author will appreciate being able to connect with you directly on Goodreads!

Build Your Community

When your friends and fans choose to follow your author profile, they’ll receive updates whenever you add something new. That’s not just referring to a newly published book! Goodreads lets you add a plethora of personalized content to help build an active community of readers, not just around your individual book titles, but around you as an author.

You can . . .

share your own book reviews and recommendations with your community,
sync your blog to automatically share new posts to your author profile,
join groups and start discussions about your book’s message,
share quotes and answer questions about your book and related topics,
add trivia questions or quizzes for those interested in your books and related topics,
and publicize upcoming events, such as book signings and speaking engagements.

Build Your Book Buzz

Building community is important, but sometimes all we want is a little more exposure for our books . . . right? Good news: this is the one of the best places to increase awareness and build buzz around your book!

While no longer free, the Goodreads Giveaways program is one of the best ways to find readers and reviewers. They can be done for either Kindle ebooks (fulfilled directly by Goodreads) or print books (you must supply and mail them yourself), at any stage of pre- or post-publication. Goodreads promotes your giveaway and helps drives entries by notifying anyone who’s followed you or added one your books to their shelves; others who have added similar books will see the giveaway in their news feed. Readers can enter to win by adding your book to their To Read shelf. Once the contest ends, Goodreads randomly selects the winners, and your book gets on its way to excited readers.

But the benefits of a giveaway don’t stop at getting your book into readers’ hands: after a few weeks, you can connect with the winners to find out what they thought of your book — and request a public review. You can also ask for reviews from others who have marked your book as Currently Reading or added it to their Read shelf (Goodreads makes that information available on your author profile.) As a bonus, Goodreads reviews are automatically exported to other websites like Google Books — so getting your followers to add even a short, positive review will provide exponential benefit.

Are you a Goodreads author? If so, share a link to your profile (or book) in the comments!

Which Social Channels Will Deliver the Biggest Boost for Your Book?

Social media is a powerful tool to create excitement and interest in your book, but authors are often confused about which social platforms will deliver the best results. Many social marketers recommend maintaining a presence on all social channels. That may work for large corporate brands, but for an individual thought leader it’s not always feasible, nor is it necessary. A targeted, strategic approach to social media can deliver strong results without becoming a full-time job.

First, it’s important to identify the target audience for your book. Different people prefer different social outlets. If you have a children’s book, but you’re doing most of your content sharing on LinkedIn, you’re likely not reaching your potential readers. It’s crucial to share content with your audience, not just to share content — which means showing up where your potential readers are in the social landscape.

Second, identify the social platforms that energize you. You’ll be much more effective on social media if you enjoy what you are doing. Sharing content is about marketing your book, but it’s also about creating connection and community. If interacting with people on Twitter feels uncomfortable for you, odds are you’ll tweet less frequently, fail to connect with potential followers, and end up wasting your time.

We recommend getting started with at least two social platforms and dedicating time and energy to learning best practices, creating high-quality content, and engaging with fans/followers to build energy and excitement around your work.

Still struggling to decide where to start?

4 Platforms We Recommend

Facebook has the largest number of users worldwide, and is constantly rolling out new functionality. While it’s difficult to grow a Page on Facebook without advertising or boosting, it is an important platform for authors. Nearly any audience you want to reach uses Facebook at some point, plus you can do some very granular audience targeting via Facebook ads. Additionally, creating a Facebook group around your topic can be a powerful way to build community and support.

LinkedIn is a terrific platform for business and leadership authors and experts. The audience here is primarily professional and interested in growth, learning, and development. If that’s your area of expertise, sharing content and regularly posting blogs here will help grow awareness and interest in your brand.

Twitter is a place where an author can build a sizable audience with some speed, but it is sometimes less effective than Facebook and LinkedIn for book promotion. That being said, Twitter resonates with certain audiences and can be a powerful place for interaction. Creating conversation around an engaging subject, with a hashtag, can help quickly widen awareness and buzz around your work. Humor works on all platforms, but can really take off on Twitter.

Instagram is where you can often reach younger audiences, but it can be a challenge for someone who is, at heart, a writer. This is a visual platform. If you have a book with beautiful artwork or if you are comfortable bringing an audience into your personal world, Instagram can be very powerful and a great creative outlet.

Pinterest, SnapChat, and YouTube can also be leveraged to support your book, but we don’t recommend them as primary book promotion outlets.

While it only takes a few minutes to set up a social account, investing the time to really understand where you can be the most successful will ultimately help you minimize your time investment and maximize your results.

Where are you focusing your book marketing efforts?

3 Steps to Reaching Your Audience More Effectively

First off, congratulations! You are most likely reading this post because you have accomplished something worth celebrating. Whether you wrote a book or a blog post, created a meaningful and useful product, or cracked the code to your service experience, you should take a moment to congratulate yourself on a huge accomplishment.

Now, how do you plan to tell people about it?

Your first instinct might be to shout your news from the rooftops (metaphorically speaking—hopefully). But the world we live in tends to ignore those blasts that seem to have no apparent rhyme or reason. Or, like most creators, you have a limited budget that you don’t want to waste on one big megaphone with little impact.

There is power in knowing your audience! 

So while your publication is full of very important information, your product will fix a huge problem, or your service experience is above and beyond, they are all useless if you never reach the people that need them.

Here are three steps to knowing your audience better for your marketing efforts.

Step One: Segment Your Audience

Picture a freshly baked apple pie (you might still be craving one in this post-holiday season). While some might be able to take on the challenge of eating the entire pie in one setting, most people realize the best course of action is to cut the pie into eight slices, so multiple people can choose and enjoy a slice.

Recognizing your audience is very similar. If you write a book about leadership, there are a gazillion different categories and sub-sections that discuss various aspects, styles, and types of leadership. Here is just one example of twelve different segments of leadership.

Step Two: Target Your Audience

Going back to our apple pie example, this is where you would choose the piece (or two) that you think would be perfect for you.

If you wrote a book about servant leadership, and you decided to segment leadership into the twelve types in the aforementioned article, you would probably choose democratic leadership, transformational leadership, and visionary leadership. While you could make the argument to choose a couple more segments, it is always better to focus on the segments that will give you their full attention first.

At this step, it is common to go back and forth between segmenting and targeting to really hone in on your audience. Don’t feel discouraged if you always feel like there are more people you want to reach. You will eventually get to those ears as well—but you must be able to focus on the people that will truly appreciate your product or service, so that they will in turn tell others, creating an eventual snowball effect.

Step Three: Position Yourself to Your Audience

What is the best way to grab your piece of pie from the pie pan? Is it to use a spoon? A fork? Or a pie server? If you have ever served yourself a slice of pie, you know to get the entire piece in one move is to use a pie server.

When you decide to focus on people who practice democratic leadership, transformational leadership, and visionary leadership to share your message about being a servant leader, you have to figure out the best way to get their attention:

What social media platform do these people use?
What kind of networking events do they attend?
What clubs are they a part of?
How do they communicate with one another?

This stage is where you will most likely find yourself conducting the most research, and it is also when you will have the opportunity to start finding and talking to your audience.

The Power of STP

Segmenting, targeting, and positioning can be extremely complex. There are entire university classes built on just those three words. This is because marketers and business-people understand the importance of knowing who you are talking to in order to, receive the largest return on investment.

It will take time and a lot of focus to really know your audience, but once you do, you have unlimited possibilities to interact and share your message.

Join the 12-Minute Book Marketing Challenge

This coming Monday (1/29), we’ll be kicking off our one-week 12-Minute Book Marketing Challenge! We created this challenge for authors of all types who are ready to take their marketing into their own hands — and see their results soar!

After launching over 100 books for our authors, we’ve figured out what works — and what doesn’t — in book marketing. We’ve also come to understand just how strapped for time authors are, and designed this challenge to help authors of all types see tangible results in just 12 minutes a day.

Your already-existing networks are your greatest asset in book marketing. Your book marketing efforts will succeed (or not) based on your follow-through in reaching and mobilizing those networks.

We designed this 12-Minute Book Marketing Challenge to help you reach those networks and get them on board, and are excited to support you! And guess what? Even if you don’t have an email list yet, this challenge will still help you to the gain major support you need.

What you’ll get:

How to easily create a larger, organized email marketing list of engaged readers (even from scratch).
How to get a “Yes” from influencers who are ready to help you promote your book.
How to most effectively feature your book on LinkedIn (the 1-minute tip I’ll be sharing with you works like a charm!).
How to start and engage with conversations about your book on Twitter — and make meaningful connections in the process!
Fun and easy points-tracking and the chance to win a grand prize!

In addition, those who sign up for this challenge will receive personal feedback from Becky Robinson and our team of book marketing experts in the Book Marketing Facebook group. Who should join? Authors, marketers, and publishers who share the common goal of sharing book marketing secrets and success stories . . . in other words, people like you!

It’s a place to connect with other authors and marketers; ask questions about marketing your book; share best tips; bounce ideas off other professionals and other authors; and learn about book marketing products, services, and even free events. Not a member yet? Join here.

What are you waiting for?

You may feel like you’ve already tried the whole book marketing thing . . . and it hasn’t worked. But with our proven system that we have implemented with hundreds of clients, you will see success in just 7 days. I can’t wait to see your results soar!

Sign up here (the challenge starts Monday 1/29).

Here’s to new success in marketing in the new year! 

4 Tips to Optimize Your Email Marketing

It is projected that the average person will receive 97 emails per day in 2018. That’s up from 108 in 2011 — and that number is expected to continue to grow into 2019 and beyond. Many thought that social media would mean the end of email marketing, but that obviously has not happened.

With Facebook’s upcoming algorithm changes, email offers a great opportunity to put your message in front of your clients and customers. Utilizing your email list can help to ensure that your message is seen by the people who are most likely to take action.

But you still need to cut through the clutter of their inboxes. Here are a few ways to make the most of your email marketing.

Target your emails

Chances are, not every email you send will apply to every person in your database. If you’re emailing about a local event, make sure the list only includes people in that geographic area. If you are looking for people to sign up for a course, you’ll want to filter out the people who have already signed up. If you continue to send your contacts emails that don’t apply to them, chances are they will quickly hit unsubscribe.

Be creative with your subject line

In order for your email to be effective, people have to actually open it! The subject line is a hook to draw your audience in to open the email. Good subject lines are often personal or descriptive, and give the recipient a reason to check out your content. It’s important to keep your audience in mind, and test keywords and phrases to see what they prefer. Be creative!

MailChimp says it well: “When it comes to email marketing, the best subject lines tell what’s inside, and the worst subject lines sell what’s inside.”

Measure, tweak, and repeat what works

Even the most basic email management system will provide information about open rates and click through rates. Each industry has a different average open rate, but according to Small Business Chronicle, the overall average open rate is 38.6%. Your rate may be lower or slightly higher than that. What’s more important to monitor is overall trends. Did you have a particularly high open rate on one particular email? What might have caused it? Does tweaking the subject line have a positive or negative impact? When you discover something that works, repeat it!

Follow up

With 97 new emails coming in every day, it’s easy for even an important email to quickly get buried in your contact’s inbox. How often do you see an email that you mean to come back to, and then completely forget? That’s why it is important to follow up in the coming days or weeks with more information reinforcing your message. Multiple touch points help ensure that people actually take action.

One caveat . . . emailing too frequently can have the opposite effect. Multiple marketing emails in the same day, or emails every day, can quickly become overwhelming. If you notice your unsubscribe rates climbing, you may be emailing too frequently.

What other email marketing tips have you discovered?

 

3 Tips to Pitch Podcasters

Millions of people tune into podcasts weekly. Podcasts are present across industries, and landing an interview on the right one can help authors move past the informational noise across so many mediums and into the right audience.

Podcasts are no longer just a love for millennials, they are reaching millions of ears across multiple generations. They are convenient: whether you are driving, cooking, cleaning, etc., the format and accessibility of podcasts helps listeners stay informed and entertained.

The often-relaxed conversation style helps authors talk about their work to potential readers in a way that publicizes more personality, revealing the energy behind their books.

Know Your Audience

There is truth to the saying there is an audience for everyone. Podcasts serve as a great medium for enthusiasts, experts, and everyone else with a shared love for a topic to come together in order to stay informed on it.

To get the most out of your podcast pitching it’s important to understand who your audience is. At Weaving Influence, we serve several business thought leaders. So we aim to reach out to podcasts that discuss business, leadership, management, and other workplace topics.

To find your audience, think about the topics that your book discusses and who else finds them interesting too. You may have expertise in one subject, but you might have enough background to expand that expertise to other topics.

Be Resourceful

Once you track down who your audience is, get familiar with the top podcasts for that industry. What are the top-tier publications or top blogs in your industry? They might have done some of the work for you. See what podcasts they suggest.

You can also see which podcasts are doing well in your industry by seeing what’s featured on streaming services like Podbean, Itunes, and Spotify. These services often include reviews and the number of downloads to help you get an idea of their reach.

Social media is a good place to understand a podcast’s reach as well. Try to find the name of the podcast on Facebook and Twitter. If you don’t see a presence look for the host, see if he or she has a large followership, and if the hosts shares those interviews to followers.

Be Unique, but Relevant

Once you find 3-5 podcasts with subjects relatable to your book, skim through the episodes and written content for them. Make sure the podcast conducts interviews, and try to find previous interviews dealing with a similar topic you would like to pitch.

Take some time to listen to the intros and, if possible, listen to more. Once you find an episode relevant to your work, use that information in your pitch. Show you can make a good fit because you have a similar perspective that the audience values, but also share something unique about it. Something new the audience can gain from your perspective.

Share Your Interview

Once you get an interview booked and conducted, find out when the interview will be live and if you can have the link shared to you when it is. Then share, share, share! Publish the podcast across your social channels and website for your followers to learn more about you and as a means to attract new ones.

Taking the time to pitch podcasts thoughtfully will help you reach your target audience faster, and share with them the authentic energy behind your work.

Facebook Is Changing. What Does That Mean for Your Social Media Marketing?

Facebook is undergoing one of its most significant changes in years. Mark Zuckerberg has promised to “fix” Facebook after continuing turmoil over “fake news” proliferating on the site. His idea — increase content from friends, family, and groups in the news feed; and limit content from companies, brands, thought leaders, authors, journalists, celebrities and more.

Zuckerberg says he wants to make Facebook a place for more meaningful and personal interactions, to put the social back in social media, but stripping news from news feeds has panicked social media marketers. We don’t have specifics yet about how these changes will play out, but we expect anyone who posts from a Facebook page, rather than from a profile, will experience a sharp blow to reach and engagement.

While it’s yet to be seen if these changes will deepen and enrich conversations on the platform, it is clear is that content marketing efforts will organically reach fewer people. The question for thought leaders will be whether it’s valuable to pay to be seen on Facebook, or whether it makes sense to focus marketing efforts elsewhere. With more than 2 billion users on the platform, it’s tough to walk away. Before taking any drastic action, however, there are a few strategies we recommend to drive continued growth and engagement for pages.

Things to Do

The algorithm change will prioritize content based on the number of likes, shares, and comments. This means that pages will need to work harder to create engaging, actionable content. Quality of posts will matter much more than quantity of posts.
Posting from a personal profile will get greater reach. Thought leaders will benefit from leveraging their personal profile, along with their page.
If there are privacy concerns, Facebook allows users to create more than one profile. A second email address is required. The current profile can be made private for communications with just friends and family, and a second profile created for a professional audience and community.
Groups will continue to get solid exposure in the news feed. Creating a group around a book launch, discussion topic, or more, is a way to continue to reach an organic audience.
Lastly, boosting targeted, high-performing content is a way to ensure marketing efforts reach a sizeable audience. (Keep in mind, both a profile and a page are required for boosting.)

Things to Avoid

Because engagement will be a deciding factor in content reach, there is a temptation to post more frequently. However, more content that receives low engagement will just further depress reach. Avoid the “more is more” temptation.
Engagement-baiting will also hurt reach. Posts that encourage users to like, share, or comment in order to answer a question or a poll will be kryptonite to organic growth.

These organic strategies should keep growth and engagement going, but it’s clear that Facebook is increasingly becoming a “pay to play” space. It will be important in the next few months to monitor engagement and growth on Facebook pages, and to evaluate which social platforms are creating the most supportive community for a thought leader’s work.

Large companies and celebrities will be able to survive this seismic shift — but individual thought leaders may increasingly turn to other platforms to find success.

 

Four Fresh Looks at Four Old PR Tools

With a new year always come new goals—and likely one of those goals is growing your business. Sharing with the world what you do is a great way to accomplish this, but it isn’t always easy. Our world is noisy. There’s lots of competition. Media space is limited.

Instead of advising you hop on the latest public relations bandwagon, I wanted to share a fresh look at four traditional public relations tools.

The Press Release

The original purpose of the press release was to garner media attention. But today, press releases often don’t lead to big-time interviews, because the competitive media market doesn’t want to report on what everyone else is reporting on.

Yet press releases are still very important, in large part because they help build your brand. They officially mark important events and recognitions, and thus tell your business’ story. Investment in this tool is still worthwhile, but the goal is different. Posting releases on your website and sharing the news with your key audiences is as critical as sending them to the media.

The Angle

You have a story to tell—but instead of trying to control the news cycle, insert yourself into it.

We call this “news-jacking.”

Media are always looking for different angles on a hot story or trend. Take advantage of this by quickly offering up your expertise in a popular area. In the pitch, include why you are an expert or worthy of commenting, and an example of what you might be able to say. Be sure to be available to them ASAP.

Help-A-Reporter-Out (HARO)

HARO and ProfNet, services in which reporters send queries looking for information for a story, are great ways to get in on the news cycle.

But the reporters often dig through hundreds of responses and only use a select few. Thus, respondents might think the work they put into the pitch is wasted if not used.

That’s not the case. Use these discarded responses to fuel your content marketing. Wait a month, then turn it into fodder for your site, blog, or newsletter.

The Media Pitch

While email is still the most preferred method of contact for media, many prefer social media outreach—(caveat!) after a relationship is built.

Target a few media contacts that really reach your audience, and follow them to get familiar with their interests and work. Then comment, like, and share about once or twice a week.

Public relations is all about relationships, and this tactic helps build rapport and get on their radar. Then, when you or your publicist pitch the media contact, they should recognize your name.

Taking a fresh approach or new look at these old PR standbys requires little money, time, or effort. Instead, a bit of creative thinking will go a long way in making 2018 the best yet for your business.

Winter Wheat: A Different Way of Thinking about Goals from a New Homeowner

In the American Midwest, where the Weaving Influence headquarters are located, there is a special variety of wheat that grows through the winter. Decoratively, it’s used just about everywhere. Clumped in yards and golf courses, scattered along highways. (It also accounts for 70-80% of total U.S. wheat production.) And honestly, I never noticed it much until I became a homeowner and started to care about things like perennials and low maintenance shrubbery.

Now that it has been hovering just around 0 degrees all week, I really, really like that there is a bit of winter wheat waving cheerily in my yard. It makes me feel like maybe I am strong and sturdy like my pioneer ancestors.

Of course, the thing that’s so cheeky about winter wheat is that it grows when it’s not supposed to. It grows at the “wrong” time. It grows when the calendar is telling those of us in the northern hemisphere to stay inside with a cup of cocoa, reflecting on the past year and planning for the next one. When most plants have wisely chosen to retreat from the cold, and take pause and rest from growing, there goes that winter wheat again.

What if growth isn’t happening when you wanted it to?
What if growth is happening when something should be—or appears to be—dead, dormant, or sleeping?

Both scenarios can be awfully lonely.

This picture (courtesy of Wyoming state archives) also really captured my imagination this year, just before we made a cross country move 700 miles west: a 1908 photo of a woman and child standing in a field of winter wheat near Newcastle, Wyoming.

The message is pretty clear here too: young pioneer, super alone. It’s lonely, growing things.

I did a little more digging on her. It turns out that a major oil gusher was discovered near this spot just a few years later. Tons of people poured in searching for a profit. This woman was standing, figuratively if not literally, on more wealth than she could imagine. Her life was about to become anything but lonely.

Dead things, or even growing things, may disguise other imminent growth.

Of course, the great thing about my (decorative) winter wheat is that . . . you don’t really need to do anything to it. Along with so many other plants, it repeats the life cycle on its own. We even learned this fall that in some yards, you don’t need to rake! You can just run the mower over the leaves to mulch them up, which makes a lovely winter coat for tree roots.

This is not true, however, of one particular tree in our yard, which is full of nasty black fungus. The solution for this is to burn every last leaf from that tree, several years in a row, so that none of them make it back into the soil. The exact opposite of my newfound, lazy mulching method.

I love the irony of this.

Am I killing myself over accomplishing unnecessary tasks?
Where is my fungus? And am I willing to do as much leaf burning as it takes to get rid of it?

On behalf of Weaving Influence, wishing you much winter wheat and no trace of fungus in this brand New Year.