A quote on NPR this morning from a student at a two-year technical college in Texas preparing for his career in factory maintenance, highly technical and manual work. The undercurrent of the story is that most college students use screens to do their work, and the loss of hands-on repair and adjustments in an industrial setting has led to the demand to surge and the supply cannot keep up.

I am back from a 17-day self-imposed social media withdrawal (with some selected self-assigned exceptions) and hereby enter the LinkedIn rumble once again. It was refreshing and stimulating to "get out of town," way out of town--to tour the idyllic countries of Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Bosnia--to celebrate 2 big work anniversaries (25 years an entrepreneur, of which 15 years as a LinkedIn coach) and several weeks back's big birthday (IYKYN) and to boldly return to post-COVID international travel.

Tomorrow being April 1st, and folks, this is NOT an April Fool's joke, I wanted to let you know that I will be taking a break from blogging and a lot of the usual verve I bring you, temporarily, until mid-May. As you know, for the past 2 weeks I have been borrowing "oldies but goodies" from past years' posts and repurposing them here.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With exactly 2834 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from August 26, 2014, yes a while ago but still relevant, I posted "Busy-ness in Your Business on LinkedIn," in which I gave you entrepreneurs ideas to keep your image fresh with  posts of what you are working on, accomplished recently, and the like.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from April 6, 2017, yes a while ago, I posted "Train Your LinkedIn Profile Readers Well," in which I gave some ideas to keep your profiel readers' attention span going when they drop by to drink from your well of wisdom.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from July 7, 2014, yes a long time ago, I posted "A Room Full of Baby Boomers," in which I felt right at home with others attending a Broadway show of Carole King's music and life story. 

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from March 13, 2014, yes a long time ago, I posted "I Have Skills But Please Think Before You Endorse Me" in which I recounted how it's my responsibility to ensure that anyone endorsing skill(s) I have actually have seen me as I performed it/them, with them in the mix, not simply "click and run" all or most of my skills, thinking they are doing me a favor.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from February 12, 2014, yes a long time ago, I posted "Try Try Again," in which I recounted how my feelings had been hurt, or something unpleasant liek that, so I severed a connection, only to have that person re-enter my life later on, so I reinstated her.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from June 13, 2014, yes a long time ago, I posted "Think and Act Globally," my observation in an ever shrinking world with global streaming and immediate access to vital information, that we need to be in the moment, and universal in our positioning.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from May 8, 2014, yes a long time ago, I posted "Why Do You Do What You Do," my query into what you don't/can't/won't tell us more about yourself, making our decision to inquire  further about you successful, or not.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from March 27, 2014, yes a long time ago, I posted "A Thank You with Style," a response to an unexpected gesture, a clue for you to make yourself stand out, perhaps when you thank someone.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice.  Plucked from December 3, 2013, yes a long time ago, I posted "Please Pay It Forward," a great habit to start, work to perfect, and encourage in others, spreading the generousity of your practice, whatever that may be.

Blogger's note: today and for the rest of this week, I will reprise some of my previous (dare I say classic?) blogposts. With over 2820 of them now, if I may say so, I believe I can repeat myself repeat myself once, or twice. PS: get the book I refer to below in its second edition! Plucked from October 19th, 2012, yes a long time ago, I posted "Get Over It," a response to a coaching client who was inwardly resistant of talking about herself, a tendency I still see today in my 2025 my coaching practice.

I just hung up with a dear friend 6 time zones away to wish her a belated happy birthday, in my real voice, via What's App, and a half-hour chatsworth later, we still had more to cover. I am about to jump on a zoom with a business colleague, also that many time zones away, for an hour's catch-up chat to benchmark progress in his fascinating and highly complex startup.

Are you a news freak too? I am and I struggle to get glimpses of news headlines that I can scan quickly in between screams of anguish about current events. Where do you get your news? Here's one place you may have underestimated. LinkedIn News page provides a curated subset of the news that breaks so fast these days, professionally edited and selected from some of the most recognized sources.

The shadows are changing, since we manipulated time this past weekend. The sun is higher in the sky, slowly a little more every day. Gardening season beckons! If I go out early in the morning for my walk or to the gym, the shadow will cast me one way. If I get up from my desk later that morning to get some fresh (cold) air, the shadow may be shorter as we approach noon.

If a profile is worthy, its Experience section tells the back story behind you. Your past history. And from that the reader can glean how your past makes your present and then imagine how your respective futures together can be fruitful. But first you have to convince them about your past. I guess I could say "but I regress." Let's look at your Experience section.

I am going to implore you once again, and yet some of you will still respond back to this with an emoji. It happens every time I post on this topic....Here goes once again.... Please don't use emojis to me or anyone else. As for me, please stop liking my comments. Please stop hand clapping my thoughts. PLease stop thumbs-upping me in anything I place on LinkedIn.

I was walking through the health and beauty department of a big-box store and saw this. (I blurred the surfaces of the bottles for artistic effect). All directions and other writing is embossed into the packaging. All sizes and strengths of the product are the same color, regardless of the purpose of the product they produce. I walked on. Nothing interesting here, IMHO.

I wonder if this the sign, a lot. I really took notice last week when my Recommendations section and all my skills and  their endorsements disappeared from a then-denuded Skills section for the better part of the day. Then I sent in Help Ticket and not as a result, but perhaps because so many people lost their copy as I did, that LinkedIn signaled a change coming.

Colorific, not a made-up smash up of "color" and "terrific," but a word from 1676, as Webster's says, means capable of communicating color. Do you stand out on yoru LinkedIn profile colorifically? I hope so. I have been harping on this for years, and still my message lambasts anyone who copies/pastes their resume or overuses bullet pointed phrases, instead of whole, rich, honest, expressive sentences, with pronoun "I" and powerful verbs, finished with a predicate that makes the reader gasp in awe of your capabilities.

There's a dance troupe from California called Bandaloop who make magic attached to ropes on vertical surfaces (buildings, cliffs, trees) to delight us with their art. I can only imagine each dancer's early days getting to know the tricks that makes the group so balletic. I had the good fortune to see them perform in 2016 and last week the New York Times covered them in an…

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance scolded President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, claiming he was not grateful enough for U.S. aid.

...You get the idea. I get these all the time. Do you? Not the best quality intro by any means (!), but remarkable in their annoying frequency. So I will remark here. Why is your boss not contacting me? Why do I get "this page doesnt' exist" if I click your name? Why would I leave LinkedIn as a communication tool and use the phone or What's App?

I am social commentary-ed out. I cannot keep up with the machine gun fire of things to read and absorb that pop on my screen(s). My good friends send me things to read so we can discuss and rise to a higher level of collective thought. They mean so well, I just cannot prioritize what to read first and by the time I get to some of these items, they are stale.