Communication

I know it is a touch early for this week's note, but I doubt if I will have a chance to write tomorrow so there you have it.

What makes for good communication between two human beings? How can you tell what someone is trying to say to you? Well, you may think this is easy and say "duh, listen to their words." Unfortunately, the spoken word is only about 8% of the message you are sending. The rest has to do with your posture, facial expressions, tone, inflection, volume, and everything else. Yeah, we are taught this in our communication classes and at leadership seminars, but come on, who really listens to and follows that kind of stuff?

I listened to it this time. And finally, I listened to it for real for once. Then I had the opportunity to apply it and I did. After that, I had the opportunity to apply it again and again, with each time getting more comfortable and meaning more to me than the last time. I would have to walk up to a new person I had never seen before (usually a student, occasionally a parent, from time to time another unrelated adult), look them straight in the eyes, shake their hand, and introduce myself. I made sure I had decent posture, slightly forward, arms down at my sides, and the more I did it, the more comfortable it became.

Okay, you wonder why on earth I am blabbing on about this, but I am telling you for one reason; it worked. You would not believe the difference that it made to students who might not have mingled with anyone otherwise. I can't put a price on any of the connections I made recently because of this method of attention to detail. I feel like I made a lot of kids' experiences better by making them feel more comfortable; one girl who was sitting on her own informed me that she wasn't hungry even though it was lunch time so we sat and chatted. Before long I offered to give her a tour of the dining facility and guess what? Suddenly she said to me "I guess I'll eat something after all." That was all it took. Win.

I actually used to be really good at this when I was younger, I was so fearless I could communicate clearly with anyone! Unfortunately, the world got its hands on me and I began to feel as if I was invading people's private spaces by looking them straight in the eyes, by touching their hands as we shook. No more... Everywhere I go from now on, no matter the camp, book signing, or other event, I am all about this straightforward and friendly communication style. I wish more people could be like band people because it would really make the world a better place.

Expression

What makes a good expression? I know that in dance, it is the lines of the body, the muscles of the face, and the quality of the movement. Many young and new dancers tend to perform dance as a series of poses: a plie here, a tendu there. The problem with that is dance is NOT a series of poses, but a series of movements. The dance is seen only in the style with which a person moves between one pose and another. This can be a difficult concept for students to grasp on their own, so I find it useful to explain this outright, to let students know that this is exactly what will be looked for.

What makes a good expression of words? Here is a problem that our society is running into daily. The issue is that we are humans, used to in-person interactions in which we can see one anothers' faces and be able to tell the meaning of the words from the body language that goes along with those. When the telephone was born, we had to learn how to better use the inflection of our voices to demonstrate meaning where body language was not a factor. With the written word, however, the majority of our society is not educated enough to express their true meanings by using JUST words. It starts in our schools, where students who write papers are allowed to "say what they mean" out loud when they answer a question incorrectly on a test. It goes on from there in online formats, where people might get into fights over something that was said online but meant in a humorous manner, or someone showing true compassion through a text message is interpreted as being sarcastic or poking fun at the less fortunate.

The only way to become better writers is to read and to write. We all need to do it, because this is what our society is turning to as its main form of communication. Sure, writing has always been around, through newspapers, books, magazines, you name it and people would read it all. The people writing those publications, however, were well-educated in their trade. Now that EVERYONE must be a writer just in order to communicate, we all need to work on getting educated in good writing techniques to increase our ability to communicate properly and with a solid understanding of one another.

Summertime

Guard season has begun! It is time for summer camps, losing weight, getting tan, performing your face off, and all of that! I absolutely love this time of year and thus I am having difficulty finding time to sit down and write.

That being said, I am enjoying my travels and the exercise and sunshine I am getting. Although there was a lot of rain today, and even a little hail. I do enjoy the rain, but this was a bit much.

Maybe I'll be able to come back when I have had a lot more time to think. Things are just too crazy right now!

Reversi

Like how last week I wrote a note about commitment, then this week I am writing a note nearly a week late? See how I did that? Ha! Life has been catching up to me, that's for sure, and I am trying to handle it the best I can.

I thought that, since it is the summer, I would have a lot less work to do and therefore more time to work on Book 2. Well, I doubt if that is going to happen at this very moment! I still want a release date this summer, and I know I gave you guys a release date of July 1, but I can already tell you that is not going to happen. I'm still shooting for having it out (at least on Amazon Kindle) by the end of this summer.

At the rate I am going (one book every other year) the entire 28-book series is not going to be finished within my lifetime!