This is Andrew Hovell's blog. He lives in Northern England. He plans for a living. He likes tea. He's as confused as you are. He doesn't usually talk about himself in the third person.
By now you'll bebored of predictions for the next decade. I know I am. It's virtually impossible to predict the future, you can only create it yourself. Try new stuff and keep doing what sticks.
We all know the Byron Sharpe consistently built distinctive assets stuff, but the problem with consistency if your not careful is that others copy you, or with the low attention span folks have these days, you'll get noticed less.
So the the only safe strategy is to consistent surprise. By all means, make sure what you do looks and feels the same, but don't let what you do become predictable.
Look at the best books. Every page and chapter is different, there are twists, turns and revelations. Every single word is building towards the same narrative though.
That's how I think you need to consider brands today. A series of surprising experiences that add up to a consistent picture, not the same thing over and over again.
I've never been too keen on marketing or business books. They can be great for frameworks and beginnings of best practice of course.
However, everyone else will be reading the same books and, therefore doing the same kind of work.
I like the ones that give you a totally fresh perspective on things, or a unique insight.
Here's a couple worth looking at.
When, by Daniel Pink. Unique human insight into how timing is everything and how to time things right. From why reaching people at different times of the day requires different messaging mood and context, to the importance in any situation where you want to be remembered, of being first, last or totally memorable. Also, why being 40ish is the most miserable time of your life. Great.
Watching the English by Kate Fox. Only useful to a UK person, but real life insight to the hidden rules that govern culture here. Who know that the chip could have so much meaning.
Why Most Things Fail by Paul Ormerod, a brilliant pop at the crapness of most economic theory. Evidence based thinking on why most markets are impossible to predict because they're just too complex - the only way to really help survival for any organisation is constant innovation. Make stuff happen, because you don't know what will happen to you.
The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr. I know, I know, bloody brand stories. I don't want you to read this for that. Rather, it shows how plot lines, inciting incidents and all the matter, but people ultimately relate to people. Characterisation, a target audience with real flaws and a gaps between how they see the world or themselves v how it really is/they are, can drive properly inspiring creative world that touches us all. In the book it's book and films, but advertising and stuff is competing with real culture, so you may as well learn from real creatives. It's a different way to think about insights but also, a great way to think about client problems because, in many cases, what is driving many problems is the difference between how they they think people see them/who buys them and the truth.
Black Box Thinking By Matthew Syed. A tour de force against great leaps of insight that rarely happen and the reliability of incremental gains. Brilliance comes from hard work and looking for little ways to improve. Even Darwinism came from lots of work and ideas by countless individuals, if Darwin hadn't put it in the back of the net, someone else would. in fact they did, Wallace.
Oh, and it's sobering reading for leaders with big egos who have forgotten to listen, stifling potential greatness by putting themselves under pressure to be the one that always saves the day. It's so liberating to be a strategy type who doesn't have amazing insights, but is able to spot insight from others. That starts with being able to listen.
Different ways to gain relevance with different lifestages. For example, older people are mentally running out of time and getting out a mental red pen and crossing out anything in life that is a waste of their time.
Then there's the fact most of what we really like culturally is decided in our twenties.
Don't drink your first caffeine drink until an hour and a half after you've woken up (it messes with cortisol production, the body's way of waking us up naturally).
Talking a five minute break every hour boosts productivity, it's even better if you move.
It takes 66 days on average to break, or build a new habit, yet most abstinence crazes like Dry January are one month, precisely half of the time it takes for lasting change.
We remember the end of things more powerfully than any other point. Apart from the beginning. How much do you make sure an new employee has a perfect first day? It will influence so much of how the rest of their time with you will go.
Conversely, the chocolate we enjoy the most is the last one in the box, or the packet.
Plan for shifts in the calendar or the day. Connecting people on the way home from work is really effective, but so is the transition from Winter to Spring.
Coming to 'transitions' matchmaking sites get disproportionate sign ups from people with '9' in their age. 29, 29, 46 etc. Because the move from one decade to another makes us evaluate our lives and, I guess, our love lives.
And on it goes.
Once upon a time, it was TV, print, press, outdoor or PR. Now you can reach people anytime anywhere, any place.
Most folks squander this by bludgeoning them with crap messaging not caring what they're really interested in. Even worse, they re-target them as if once wasn't enough. Sometimes, a sale isn't enough, they'll re-target you with what you've just bought.
When we can now add value to what people are caring about by the ad synching what folks are doing and what they care about at that moment.
But it can be so much better, synching with what they care about, the ebbs and flows of the year and even the ebbs and flows or age, new beginnings and even endings.
I read The Path recently. It's worth a look, basically a summary of Chinese philosophy and what it means for us today.
Confucious etc.
Some things to think about:
Every generation thinks they're special. Today's West thinks it came first with experiments on freedom of thought and self determination. We were not. This has a lot of relevance for the day job, where everyone thinks everything is newer and better and so different to years gone by. Well, you can call it Native of you want, back in the day, we called them 'Advertorials'.
Humans don't make that many decisions alone. Most of how we behave depends on how we interact with others, most of our habits and those things we say are 'just the way we are' came from the result on interactions with folks at a particular point in our lives. So don't research the person, research the connections between people. If you want to change behaviour, change the interactions.
We think of ourselves, brands too, as fixed objects, some sort of innate self and identity. We have this thing about being authentic and 'finding ourselves'. Just as you mess with the brand onion at your peril. But actually you make your own luck, you construct your identity every single day, subtly altering with the sheer density of events and interactions. Which means you can control your own destiny if you focus on the very small and look at changing that. Just as a brand needs to evolve over time, in way that's only noticed if one bothers to look back. You don't realise the Coke can has changed massively over the last 30 years until you look back to how it was.
Physicists today are increasingly convinced that particles don't really 'exist' until they interact with something else. We are made up therefore of trillions of sub-atomic interactions. Turns out, it's useful to think about that in general life as well as brands.
It's less useful to think of yourself of the brand you work on as a fixed 'thing' but rather an evolving picture made of thousands, millions of interactions with other people.
Moves on the boring 'brand as person' metaphor maybe, to brand as 'as human interactions'.
To the point when I usually get his new book as soon as it is published. Forget paperbacks, I want it now.
Over a number of years, he's built up quite a following for largely writing variations on the same them.
A lonely man with unrealised ambitions, who cooks a lot of spaghetti, has a lost love and a past he cannot reconcile, with a new, enigmatic girl in his life, meanwhile a parallel world full of possibility begins to bleed into this one. There is a lingering sense of sadness and loss of what could have been, with a coming to terms of what is and what could be.
It's never boring because there is so much invention in every page. Every book is a surprise and delight, yet it always feels like coming home.
I think brands have something to learn from this.
I've often found that 'brands as people' is too artificial, not to mention that a rigid 'essence and values' model is just too limiting, especially for a fast moving media landscape like we have today.
But I've never bought 'brands as conversations' and 'relationships', which all the data tells us is, as far as generating business growth, hogwash.
I do like the idea of brands thinking of themselves more as content creators and less as advertisers. This shouldn't be news to anyone - the best advertising has never felt like an 'ad' it has always rewarded the viewer - but it's fair to say that more and more of what we do needs to add value where it shows up and what people are looking for.
But of course, we also know that brands need to build consistent, yet distinctive. Continously interesting, yet familiar.
I venture being more like a Murukami, with a big flexible theme, rather than a tight, never to be messed with brand triangle/onion/key.
I reckon brands should think of themselves more like authors than advertisers.
You know what you'll be getting from Murukami, a Phillip Roth or even a Stephen King or Hillary Mantel.
You will be entering a familiar world in which you'll be entertained and surprised .
In fact, you enter a particular world when you're listening to Radio 4 or watching HBO.
Maybe that's what we should start asking if we were an author, what are the constants in how we tell our story. Or what is the equivalent to 'Radio 4-ness' or 'HBO-ness'.
I'm not saying that people are sitting and waiting for our stuff (and I'm a heavy Murukami buyer, most folks will have read two of his books bet). But when we do stuff that hopefully get's us noticed by folks that don't care, it needs to build up a picture, a world, over time.
If you like, boil down any Lego construction, no matter how amazing, it's made of the same simple collection of bricks.
I'm a little unsure of the entire premise - that we're all in sales now. Not that I question his overall thesis, all life is about persuading others to do stuff they otherwise wouldn't afterall, it's just that the book perhaps leaves out nuance to fit the single minded argument.
What I find really valuable though, is the various insights about how to be persuasive and move people towards where you want them.
For example, if you want to motivate people, including yourself, it's better to ask IF you can achieve the outcome, rather than state boldly that YOU CAN.
For example, if you ask yourself, "Can I persuade the tough audience in my presentation?" you're mind automatically moves to strategies to help you do this. Rather than the usual visualation techniques where you just picture success.
This has implications for advertising I think, with 'purpose' led brands stating they'll get us all to some utopian future, rather than asking us how we'll all make it happen. B&Q in the UK (DIY retailer) tells us "You can do it", rather than "Can you do it?".
It's also why Bob The Builder is a motivational genius with his 'Can we fix it' mantra!
Also, empathy isn't as valuable as 'attunement' in personal persuasion. Rather than focus on how people feel, you'll change behaviour more if you can focus on 'what are they thinking'.
On a brand level though, you might think it might run against the fashion for arguing that emotional advertising is more effective.
It doesn't, it's just what people are thinking isn't anything to do with your brand AT ALL!
But it is worth thinking about context when you're planning when and where you want to show up.
One of the basic mistakes made in 'shopper marketing' is not understanding that you can get people thinking about self image and identity (brand stuff) well outside a supermarket, but as soon as they get near the store, they're just thinking about what they will eat this week, what they can afford and who will like what. It's VERY task based. Persisting with brand stuff is a waste of money.
Bandwagon jumping I know, but I read Stoner the other day.
What a truly wonderful book. Well written, well observed characters and stuff.
But what's I really loved was the way he captured the significance of insignificant people.
People who won't be remembered, people who go through life, then disappear and nothing much happens.
The stormtroopers of the everyday.
It captures the grace and drama of the everyday toil. Which is the life of most of us.
This has something to say to a world that seems to love fame and doing not much. Rather than the real graft and tiny, yet planet sized hopes, fears and passions of real life.
And an adland that perhaps loves its rockstars a little too much.
Also it vividly emotes the pain of a father who wants nothing more than to spend time with his little girl, but always has to compromise. It talks of beautiful little girl who died to leave someone else. It made me cry, it made me think about my kids, it reminded me nothing matters more than my kids, nothing.
Just finally got around to reading Cognitive Surplus. And you know what, I find it disappointing.
Maybe it's because what he's on about has already seeped into the way we go about our collective day jobs and I've jut got to it too late, so it's not new.
But I'm not so sure. I like books that compress half formed thoughts, suspiscions, opinions and and habits I have into something simpler. Somtimes I need someone else to tell me what I think (that's why I like colloborating with certain people at work). Where Good Ideas Come From is one those books. It re-arranges much of what you already know pr believe into something bigger and simpler somehow.
I don't think this book does. Mostly because I don't agree with his main point. He goes on about lots of stuff we already know (social humans, technology changes but people don't etc) but adds it all up to the premise that people wasting spare time watching telly and stuff is an artificial construct and actually we'd all rather be making things and joining movements together.
I just don't buy this. If there's a fundamental principle of humans, it's that we always go for the path of least resistance. TV, reading books and stuff or just playing with the kids is easy. And most people need that because they work hard. There will be busy bodies around the fringes, but most people can't be bothered really, and until we take away long working days, that won't change. Digital stuff is really a more interactive (possibly social) form of entertainment.
That's why most people can't be arsed to upload vidoes to brand sites, vote in a manufactured community based campaign or anything else that requires too much effort.
It's a must for anyone who wants to understand how superhuman sports performers REALLY got that good. I think it also provides a great lesson for planners.
The main thrust of the book is that incredible performance in any field isn't determined by talent, what matters is the work you put it. In essence, practice DOES make perfect, as long as there is lots of it and the kind of training you do is always pushing you towards slightly unattainable goals.
Champions are made, not born.They just put more hours in and fill those hours trying to do things they can't quite do just yet.
Planners have loads to learn from this. First and foremost, don't believe that rubbish your brain being wired the right way or not, you can train your mind to operate differently. If you're an Account Exec that hates schmoozing and thinks contact reports are really, really boring, start learning to think like a planner now....
Start talking to them about their work and how they go about it, they'll only be too happy to share, no one tends to make any effort to talk to planners unless they really have to.
Think about the creative work you like, try write what you think the brief might have been, get feedback from planners and creatives, do it a lot.
Cultivate a curious mind, read lots of stuff that has nothing to do with advertising, watch lots of popular culture stuff and every month, and every month, from what you are constantly absorbing, share three things you believe are really relevant and useful to your client and the category at large.
Start getting hold of the lots of data to do with your category. Get planners, the client's research agency or your analyst (if you have one) to take you through what they look for and how they find patterns in numbers. Start doing this yourself.
There's lot more of course, but as a start, if you begin to work hard at doing and thinking planner type stuff, if you want to be one, you can. Oh, and since the biggest criticism of suits within and outside agencies is that they don't think, they just sell, you'll make yourself the best suit in your agency anyway.
So don't believe the hype about rock star planners and so called 'genius' planning directors. They were not born that way, it's the benefit of experience and hard work. That's right, great planners are not cleverer than anyone else, they just work harder.
There are certain traits to being English that are at once endearing, frustrating and eccentric.
For example, most middle class people will sneer at the thought of anyone who drives a Ford Mondeo and it's connotations of 'Essex' man or 'insurance salesmen. But the amount of sneering is directly related the person's level of personal insecurity and true social standing. The more you sneer at Mondeo Man, the more you're likely to a lot more like him that you would like people to think.
Another interesting one is our obsession with owning a home. This is closely linked with our social awkwardness...we want a safe private place where we don't have to talk to other people. Our pre-occupation with homes gives us an endless subject of smalltalk (second only to the weather!) in place of having to think of something interesting to talk about (this social awkwardness also explains our peculiar fear of public transport).
This is going to get interesting, since various economic issues means we're likely to to turn into a nation of renters, not a nation of homeowners. I wonder if this will gradually reverse our painful social rubbishness or not. I gues it depends if we got socially rubbish because we all hid in our homes, or we hid in homes because we were already so socially useless.
Anway.
(by the way if you find any of this interesting, read this)
I really enjoyed this Do Lecture from Alan Moore, about how changes in technology are fundamentally changing our behaviour, like movable type did. You might have heard this argument before, but basically; top down organisations are going through their last throes of success, the future will be communities doing it for themselves (it's more nuanced than that of course, but..well, just watch it)
I don't know if he's totally right, but I'm not so sure and I think that's my point: no one does. History is littered with little flags placed in moments in time where someone has pronounced 'The Age is this' 'The death of that' but usually, it's nothing of the sort, it's a little wobble or a bit tacking in the general direction of getting a little better.
I agree that we're all getting more bolshy when told what to do and suspect kids are even worse at accepting hierarchyy than they've always been, but just because our penchant for community is being freed up a little again, but surely that doesn't mean that how we live in communities per se will change?
All communities have hierarchy and leaders - it doesn't matter if that's human communities, chimps or Lions. The strongest stag earns his right to be at the top of the pecking order, the male with the most impressive plumage gets first pick of the females, think we're going back to that...we still want leaders, we still want organisations and institutions to help us live our lives, they'll still guide and soemtimes even tell, but they have to earn our respect, love and adulation, it's no longer theirs by right or due to size, money or whatever.
For brands and stuff, that just means there's no excuse for crap products or marketing that's boring or insults the intelligence. But while we want to partcipate, we still want things that surpise and delight us, things we can't do for ourselves. Yes, we'll enjoy noodling around and making and sharing our own stuff, but we can't be arsed to do the great stuff ourselves.
In other words, make something great and then let me join in.
That's why 'brand as verb' 'brands as conversations' is so much hot air - the good ones always were, it's just that now, no one has to put up with the bad ones.
Remember these? Good weren't they? Who says that brand storytelling etc is anything new? I guess the only thing that would be different now might be each character having their own Facebook account, the book, the extra episodes online, the exclusives and the leaks and maybe even releasing new characters and story arcs to hardcore fans and maybe letting them in on the story.
The dynamic at the heart of the story is unreleased sexual tension. It's not the only beating heart to a good story, but it certainly is a good one.
Like this..
This....
This..
And this.....
And this ;-)....
But it's not in this (nor any chemistry whatsoever)...
Like most good elements to a story, we can relate to UST because we see our own lives reflected back at us. Something ad people and genuine entertainers could do well to remember, we want new stories of course, but in reality, we want stories to talk to us about our own lives. It's just that it's usually more powerful when the context isn't humdrum real life but something else. That's why I get annoyed at so called down to earth, community focused clients wanting to only exist in hyper-reality - people don't want their own lives played back at them exactly. Look at soaps, they are not reality, they're exaggerated in almost everyway.
I wanted to pick an argument with someone who opined that Shakespeare is overrated. Fair enough if you consider the emphasis he gets in schools over other's (even Ben Johnson in his own era), but there's a reason. No one has consistently told us about ourselves in a collection of works like Shakespeare, mostly because he has the knack of dealing with universal truths and issues by placing them in unreal settings.
The debate over Shylock - understandable victim of prejudice or a warning against greed is echoed in arguments today over someone as a terrorist or freedom fighter, layabout or forgotten generation.
Rosalind in 'As you like it' was a great source of inspiration for some work I did on dressing up and being able to play with your appearance and identity - how wearing a costume changes you inside - or brings out a version of you hitherto unknown.
Anyway, all I'm saying is that it doesn't matter if you're making an ad, writing a book or scripting a film, whatever the setting, storytelling needs to talk to humans about humans in some way to be truly great and in many cases, it's more powerful when it's not 'real'.
By the way, a useful rule for UST is the same as food - if you lick it, you have to eat it.
I can't remember if i've talked about Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic or not, but I've been dipping back in for something or other at work. If you haven't read it and you work on something to do with cars, you should, there are lots of fresh perspectives on stuff. If you don't work on cars, you should too, it tells you new things about people. Anyway...
I'm still amazed by the bits that remind you what an amazing feat driving is.
It's made up of 1,500 sub-skills, we make about 20 decisions per mile, process 1,300 pieces of information per minute. It's incredible. But we do it so easilly, we don't really dwell on it, but in world where they can build robots to calculate in a second what it would take a human all their life, the best any robot can do is last a couple of seconds driving in an average high street.
I think that's interesting from a road safety persective. Instead of the usual 'shock and awe' stuff you usually see on from government funded stuff, how interesting would it be to start with a complement tell people how amazing they are every day? The fact we take it for granted leads to over confidence and most accidents. We're all vain, why not seduce with flattery rather than bludgeon with fear?
Don't be put off by the, pretty much accepted premise, that brands become icons through carving a values position in culture and becoming and outward demonstration of ones values and identity. Do be excited by the idea that they resolve clashed between cultural values and expectations and personal realities (or that's how I read it).
So Johnnie Walker makes you feel like a modern man with depth, experience and inner strength even if you're a one dimensional, avaricious image conscious idiot (or an account handler).
Levis makes you feel confident, rebellious and cool, even if you're a nerd.
Innocent makes you feel good, naturist and environmentally aware, even if you leave your telly on standby.
One interesting outcome though - it really does point to a problem with contemporary society. We may have moved from 'image and owning' in some cases, but 'Values and experience' still seems to encourage us to have impossible ideas of who we can be, and make us feel bad for not living up to them.
There has never been so much choice when it comes to reading about brands, planning and stuff. There's the multitude of books and then there's even more blog type advice.
Of course, this is great, there's never been a better opportunity to plug into lots of great thinking, get inspired and do great things, no matter who you are, where you work or who you work for.
But like culture in general, to much info brings choice paralysis. It's not helpful that most of the things your read tend to be the agency or personal creds masquerading as the latest piece of thinking, rather than stuff that helps you learn about planning/brands etc.
I still think you should start with Eating the Big Fish, Truth Lies and Advertising, Perfect Pitch and maybe Herd and the Brand Innovation manifesto (can't be bothered to link, just look for them in Amazon).
Anything else is likely to confuse until you've got basics down. Get really good at them, then start inventing.
Doesn't matter if we're in a Brand 2.0, Web Enabled Consumer in Control world or not (we are).
It still boils down to telling true (at a pinch credible) stories about the product/brand and making them relevant/interesting/useful to the people you need - to their lives and interests, so they want to spend some time with it and even talk about it. Only real development is knowing when and where to show up rather than interruption (or at least interrupt with something worthwhile).
The only thing that's changed is that it's harder to get away with marketing being about the product/service people really want, rather than what's on offer...and even harder to get any traction with marketing that's less interesting than the culture it's competing with.
So if your working with TBWA's Disruption, WK's ''find the voice first', McCann's Demand Chain, Crispin Porter's 'Baked In' philosophy, Mother's 'Cultural fame' or even Dynamic Brand ideas, remember, it all boils down to the same principles - product truth, brand truth, consumer truth and category (hopefully cultural) engagement truth = great idea, then great execution.
I went a big mad on Amazon last week, it's just how I roll sometimes.
As is usual with me, I managed to lace something simple with a flavour of muppetry and embarrassment. How? By forgetting to put my name on the delivery address.
That would have been find if it was just one parcel, but on no sir, not me. I bought from a smorgasbord of third parties, resulting in 7 parcels dripping in over 5 days, all arriving at work's reception with no name, meaning I had to continually do the walk of shame to pick them up, in answer to the 'all users' email, "Has some muppet ordered from Amazon without a name, who isn't Andrew?".
Moving on.
Two highlights. One is Baked In by Bokuskyof Crispin Porter fame. Have a look at their site for 28 recipes for modern marketing thinky stuff. I don't usually read or recommend 'work related' books, but this is worth a look. The site is a good example of 'un-book' too.
Another arrival worth sharing is the book of 'We Feel Fine'. The site is beautiful, but the book is thoughtful, moving and ably demonstrates how screeny, flashy, electronic stuff is all well and good, but there's nothing like touching something real. I love social study type things, this is one of them that works really well.
She also took the opportunity to share the news that she's in my old desk and making tea properly. So that's good and the desk couldn't have gone to a nicer person (I miss my old department, despite the bullying over drinking coffee).
Anyway, I haven't had a chance to read it, obviously, since it arrived today, but I wanted to see how good he was as compressing useful stuff into digestible, doable chunks, since that's what I'm supposed to do for a living.
There's a good little epilogue at the back, very Behavioural Economicsy. There's a short paragraph that advises you get suspected liars to email you, people are 20% less likely to fib if they have to commit it to paper. I knew open plan offices were daft. I'm going demand my own office and shiny Yale padlock.
I'm not sure it's the done thing to admit to, but I'm really looking forward to the final series of Lost. It begins on Friday. It's gone a little bonkers at times, but I've grown to love the characters, the maddening twists and the endless sub-plots.
Multi -stranded, multi-platform entertainment feels like the norm these days, and that's a good thing as explained here.
It's not that new though. At the start of the 90's before things got all clever, there were true pioneers.
I point you towards David Lynch and Twin Peaks, my favourite telly series ever. It was just so bonkers new and different. Multiple plot lines, working things out for yourself, group debates and conversations..it was all here.
Anyway, all this is just an excuse to present to you the man in the red suit.......
I'm in the middle of reading Andre Agassi's 'Open'. As you might expect. Apparently he wrote it himself and if so, that's amazing. It's a beautiful, tautly written book. Sport is so much more than the performance, it's a freakish, lonely life. This book captures that.
Anyway, at the heart of the book is a contradiction. He hated tennis but couldn't stop. 'I want this to be over' 'I'm not ready for this to be over'. I think this captures a truth that isn't just about sport, but about anything that's worth doing. It's conflicted and un-simple.
In George Orwell's 1984 we have double think. The idea of holding two contradictory arguments in your head at the same time. I think there's power in conflict and contradiction. There's real power in tension. Not the resolution of tension or conflict, as much of advertising tries to work to, but a fuzzy spot in the middle of both.
In sport, proper sport that requires pain and sacrifice, athletes at once love it and hate it. Pain brings joy, joy in effort etc. You want the pain to stop, but rejoice in forcing yourself to carry on. Every single training session is redemption and escape from your own personal limits. There is no joy without pain. They are two sides of the same coin and need to be allowed to co-exist.
This is true of so much in life. Most people in agencies for example at once hate it and love it. They hate the hours, the constant grind, the stress, the unpredictability. But they also love that stress, it makes them feel alive. It's addictive. And the effort and trial and tribulation make the end result so much sweeter. Even that's bitter sweet, there's nothing at once euphoric and sad as coming to the end of a book and having to start again. Much of agency life is like that, much of LIFE is like that.
Anyone that tells you that a having a baby is simple joy is offering falsehood. It's hard, stressful and restrictive. But there's an intense joy in that effort, doing something for someone else, at the mercy of your own instinctive need to care for your own flesh and blood. And amidst all that is the first smile, the first giggle and the holding him in your arms and just loving him.
Yep, there's power in contradiction, not necessarily in its resolution, sometimes (mostly) in NOt resolving it.
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