Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

  When I inquire more deeply into the question of what I need, I find that the list of things I truly need is relatively small. The list of things I've convinced myself I need is longer than my life will allow. And there are things I say I need, but they're just means of getting something I really need. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs identified a few layers of gradually more sophisticated needs, but beyond the bottom layer of core physical survival, I wonder if each successive layer might not actually be necessary. Advertisers and marketers constantly play these survival needs, convincing us that our face cream is the difference between being accepted or shunned by our social group. If we look more deeply at our social needs, it may be that what we believe we need is more of a player than what we actually need. See what happens when I make my video early on a Sunday before making my coffee... I'd like to help you start, finish, and launch the creative passion project you...

I listened to a podcast the other day in which two women were talking about their success online, which apparently had something to do with something called content. In the course of the 50 or so minutes they were talking, the word "content" was spoken between 5 and ten times a minute. Content, content, content. Creating content, content marketing, content, content, content, more content. This generic term has come to mean less and less, and it leaves a taste in my mouth comparable to that brought about by the generic beer I tried after the high school football game all those years ago. I can still bring the taste to mind, and it isn't a fond memory. It used to be that people wrote articles, or stories, or songs, or screenplays, or they made films, or wore out their dad's Super 8mm camera, spending their hard earned lawn mowing cash on getting those films developed, then splicing their masterpieces together on the kitchen table with a pair of scissors and Scotch...

I went through many years of my life seeking romantic love. From the earliest times when I figured out that people could couple up, that’s what I wanted. Whenever I’d meet a new person the first thought would be “I wonder if she’s interested?” There wasn’t a slight possibility for friendship, just a hope that I’d finally have found “The One” who would satisfy that longing and make me whole. No wonder they’d run. Barf! The pattern was usually one of two. First, there was the pattern of me falling hard for them and they’d run. Second, vise versa. Either way I spent a lot of time on a roller coaster of seeking, finding and losing that always had an acute layer of pain that would grow over time, just keeping the cycle going. Most of my waking hours were spent obsessing and feeling out of control, wandering all over the countryside looking for Dulcinea. There would also be periods where I’d put on a brave face and show the world that I didn’t need love, that I was just fine by myself, ...