Month: November 2022

Personal story, circa 1995:

Our team faced multiple problems, seemingly interlocking, no obvious path forward.  A bunch of us had some ideas and suggestions but none of us felt we had authority to make anything happen.  We also felt like were in a fishbowl with everyone else in the organization watching us. 

Our Director called us into a meeting on this topic.  I can remember feeling a sense of relief that he was stepping in and would tell us what we should do.  We settled in our seats, notepads and pens ready.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he started off.  “But I know what we’re NOT going to do.”  He went on listing things we were not going to do.  He included things like:

He added “And I’m not going to throw you under the bus when something doesn’t work perfectly from the start.”

He concluded by saying, “I’m confident you guys will come up with a solution and make your recommendations to me by the end of the week.”  Then he walked out of the conference room.  We still had about 100 minutes of our 2-hour scheduled meeting we could use.

We went into the meeting thinking our Director was going to tell us what to go do.  Instead, he kicked-started our conversation about what we should do.  Years later I recognized that this Director had brilliantly set this up so that we owned the projects and brought our personal responsibility energy into the implementation. 

Try this tactic when there are confusing options.  Focus your attention on what you’re NOT going to do, and it may become more apparent what you should do.

Periodically I’m asked for advice or instruction about how to be a published author.  It’s straightforward but there are still many steps to complete. Fortunately, the tools make it much easier than in decades past.  Self-publishing is more marathon than sprint.  (Yes, I know, it is possible to publish a crappy Kindle book in a day.) Some people become consumed in mechanics and miss the larger picture.  Others have clear ideas about what they’d like to happen but can’t get through the mechanics.  The guidelines below can help you and will point you to other resources you’ll find helpful.

Key parts of the process:

• Know the Target Audience and Your Purpose for the Book
• Write and Edit the Manuscript
• Publish on Amazon.com with KDP service
• Launching Your Book
• Monitoring Sales and Reviews
• Engaging with Readers Over Time

Know the Target Audience and Your Purpose for the Book

Think carefully about your target audience – what benefits them?  It’s not about you! Structure your content accordingly. 

Why are you publishing this book?  What do you hope to gain?  Your answers will shape how you write the book, but especially how you’ll launch the book and use published copies.  Common answers are some combination of these:

• I have great ideas I want to share
• A book will outlast me, and reach people I’ll never meet
• Being a published author enhances my credibility and expertise
• A book will make me more famous
• This book will be a lead-generator for new business
• This book complements my speaking and consulting business
• I want to earn royalties

Write and Edit the Manuscript

Write the book for your specific target audience.  Create personas of readers or imagine writing to an individual person in your target audience. 

I suggest you create a detailed outline – chapters and sub-parts you expect to include – before you start writing your text.  This also means you can write in any part of the book, without worrying about the sequence.  An increasing number of people are recording themselves talking, then getting a quick transcript using a service like temi.com. You still need to do cleanup and editing, but it can be easier to produce a first draft.

Don’t edit as your write. Writing and editing require different kinds of thinking. Write, write, write.  Then come back to edit. 

Create a plan to succeed. A systematic approach of producing a specific amount of text (e.g., 500-1000 words a day, or 2500 words every weekend) will help immensely.  Set target dates to have each stage completed.

Graciously accept feedback and suggestions from people who read your manuscript.  Writing is rewriting.

Ask someone else to proofread your manuscript for spelling errors and identify problems with grammar, preferably someone who is not an expert in your topic.  You’ll be amazed at how many times your brain missed an error that others spot instantly.

Consider using some “good, but didn’t quite fit” material as bonus content in your book launch work.

Publish on Amazon.com with KDP service

The KDP service (kdp.amazon.com) has made self-publishing a straightforward exercise.  [I say “straightforward,” not easy.]  Setting up the account is free.  You can publish in Kindle and/or paperback formats, and Amazon has just introduced hard-bound books.  The quality of the paperbacks is good, and print-on-demand speed is fast.  Amazon is not stockpiling your books in inventory; each order is fulfilled with a new print job.

What you need for Kindle publishing:

• A formatted manuscript in Word
• A cover image in the correct dimensions
• A description of your book which customers will see
• Information about you (and any other authors)
• Which 2 categories you want to list your book
• Pricing

Add this information for paperback publishing:

• Your choice of book dimensions and paper type
• A PDF formatted for the book interior layout
• A PDF cover image (including front, spine, and back) sized to match the interior # of pages

KDP shares all the technical details about sizing the interior and covers. 

My suggestion: Hire out the work of formatting the book interior layout and the cover art unless you’re a graphic designer.  There are hundreds of people on fiverr.com who do good work with fast turnaround (usually 48 hours) for modest fees.  They know exactly how to set up dimensions for Amazon’s requirements. They’ll take your suggestions and work with you on revisions.  I spent $106 plus tips for 2 gigs for the interior formatting and cover art for my Bold and Gentle book – the results look professional and are far better than I could have ever produced. 

Book cover art is important for sales. Fiverr gigs are cheap enough that you can consider working with 2 or even 3 people on cover art to generate more ideas.  Share different cover possibilities with people you know and get their feedback.  The one I liked most has never been the one the majority of people thought was the best. 

Amazon has an easy-to-use wizard for uploading your content and capturing all your decisions.  The wizard will reject submissions which don’t match the technical requirements.  It usually takes 24-72 hours for Amazon to review a book before it goes live on amazon.com. 

Set up your Amazon Author page.  This is a good place to share more information about yourself.

Amazon pays royalties to you as the author.  Currently a $0.99 Kindle book generates a $0.35 royalty.  Paperback royalties are calculated based on the size and type of layout.  You’ll need to sell many books to earn “I can live on this” money.  

Launching Your Book

It’s possible that a few people will see your newly published book on Amazon.com.  You’re in good company – as of September 2022 there were about 20 million Kindle books available.  One estimate I saw claimed there were at least 4 million self-published paperbacks.

Amazon has a ranking system for all books.  Highly-ranked books are shown to browsing customers much more often.  Their algorithm is secret and evolves, but clearly books with more (and better) reviews rank higher.  More sales means better ranking.  More people looking at your book probably helps ranking, too, even if they don’t buy.  It’s better to rank high in narrow categories than to rank low in broad categories.

Therefore, you need to draw people’s attention to your book.  You can take two approaches.

1. Tell your family and friends, post about it on social media, and people you know.  You’ll get a few sales this way but don’t have high expectations.  In my experience I received many “That’s great!” messages but saw very few sales.
2. Build a launch team.  This is a group of people (20 or more is best) you ask to review the manuscript ahead of a launch date.  You ask them to give an honest review on Amazon.com and share about the book on social media.  These early readers of your manuscript can give you valuable feedback and suggestions.  Generally, you’re going to give them a copy of the final book and some “insider” access to you.  The launch team approach takes some work up front but brings much more attention to your book.

You should certainly explore ways to building anticipation for your book.  Post a picture of the cover with a “coming soon” message.  Give people information about why you wrote this book.  “Behind the scenes” and personal content resonates with potential buyers.

Amazon allows authors purchase paperback copies at a discounted price, just above their production costs.  These are called “Author Copies.”  Most common uses:

• Gift to family, friends, colleagues, and people who helped you create/launch the book
• Give to prospects and customers for your business
• Use at speaking or conference events.  Often you can work out a deal with the event organizer to give every participant a copy; you get paid for providing the copies, and the author copies let you offer the organizer a discount from the retail price.  Or you can promote your book and sell them at a retail price at the event.  People often like signed copies.

It’s useful to periodically post on social media channels about your book with a link to purchase.  It’s rare for someone to see everything you’ve ever posted on a social media platform, so you’re hitting new audience members all the time. 

You might want to add a link to your book as part of your email signature. 

Something I’ve seen people do is to “re-launch” a book after a while.  There are new audiences to reach.  Sometimes people become interested later who passed on buying your book when you first published it.  You can even publish an updated version of your book with edited or new content.

Monitoring Sales and Reviews

KDP has easy, extensive reporting on your book sales.  You won’t get the names or contact information for the buyers (more on that below). 

I have reminders set in my productivity software to remind me to check reviews and sales reports at least weekly.  I check more often with brand-new books.  Amazon does not notify you about book reviews.

Frankly, it’s difficult to understand some purchasing patterns.  It would nice to know why you’re getting a sales spike but you might not always know.   One author acquaintance does a Google search on his book titles every few weeks to find reviewers and anyone referencing his books.  He makes a point of connecting with them, saying thanks, and addressing questions. 

Engaging with Readers Over Time

Amazon (understandably) isn’t going to provide the contact information for people who buy your book.  This is ideal for hermits who don’t want to interact with readers, but those people aren’t usually willing to do the work of writing and publishing a book.

An effective strategy is to set up a web site where you park bonus content (written, audio, video), tool or resource recommendations, maybe a discussion forum.  In your book itself you steer people to the web site.  I suggest you put information about the bonus content at the front and the end of the book so readers are more likely to act on it.

Here’s the trick: Get their email address in exchange for access to the content.  This lets you build an email list you can contact in the future. 

I won’t go into the mechanics of web sites, email acquisition and list management here – plenty of tools are available at modest prices today, and how-to information abounds.

Another approach to interact with readers is to publish an email contact in your book.  Set up a special email address; don’t use your everyday account.

One important reason to email readers is to thank them for reading your book – in effect, reinforcing that they made a good decision.

Some people create Facebook Groups around a book to facilitate information sharing and community engagement.  This is “free” except for your time.  Keep in mind that Facebook owns the platform.  If they change their rules, you might lose the community.  I would not build a whole business on Facebook because it’s a risky point of failure.

Responding to Amazon reviews and comments on social media is another way to interact with buyers. 

Go for it!

I encourage you to press ahead with any desire to publish a book.  The world needs your ideas and inspiration!  Make sure you consider all the aspects of publishing and get help to complement your skills and generate a professional-quality book.

Recommended Resources:

The Self-Publishing School has many good articles and resources.

My recommended writing tools are Scrivener (a learning curve, but designed for books) and Word

Temi.com for transcribing audio files

Fiverr.com for Gig work on book covers and interior formatting

How to set up your Amazon Author page

About building a book launch team

There are online communities of writers who share ideas and tactics for self-publishing.  These can be a great source of information but avoid letting them be a distraction from the hard work of writing a good book and getting into the hands (and minds and hearts) of readers.  Look for a community which is tailored to fiction or non-fiction, depending on what you publish.  

A curated list of Facebook writer’s groups

Most of us have a self-narrative that the world is imposing complexity and distractions into our lives, making us harried, hurried, and anxious.  These external factors are making it ‘impossible’ for us to focus, rest, be present in the moment, be creative, experience peace.

95% of you reading this, at least 50% of the time, have significant security, ample food and shelter, and loving relationships. 

Yet how difficult is it for us to sit quietly alone?  Given a few spare minutes – or if we get bored or frustrated doing something else — we check email or social media.  Many of us must have music or the television going.  An evening with no other obligations gets filled with web browsing or TV, or both.  Maybe it’s become our habit, but our behaviors tell us that our desire for muchness, manyness, and noise is rooted in ourselves.

I encourage you to explore a different self-narrative: “I’m the one craving complexity and distraction.  Going after these things will not help in the long run. I can choose to respond to these desires another way.”

Eggs will harden in hot water under pressure.

Potatoes will soften under the same conditions. 

Leaders are wise to understand there is an interaction between people and environmental conditions.  Some people become better and more capable under stress.  Others break down.  Some organizations use this as a selection strategy for the individuals and teams they want to retain.  

Over time I’ve tried to predict which people will handle stress in a way they come out more capable on the far side.  My success record is quite poor.   Some people who I judged as mushy potatoes rose to challenges magnificently.  Others I thought would surely win through collapsed in heaps of misery.  

The best strategy is to have high expectations — and monitor, encourage, adjust work loads where you can.   

Here are questions I’ve asked people in the past few months which tend to make them uncomfortable: 

“So what?” 

“Do you ever change your mind when presented with new information?”  (My friend Mike asks a nice variation on this: “Tell me about the last time you changed your mind about something important.”) 

“How do you define ‘white’ and ‘black’ in a multinational company?  What if I decide today to identify as a black woman?” 

“Will this matter to you in 3 or 30 years?” 

“If it doesn’t matter how much money the government prints, why bother to collect taxes?” 

“When was the last time screaming at someone persuaded them to love you more?” 

“Are the forces that drove cycles of ice ages and glacial retreats still at work today?” 

“Why do stories about sea level rise in Boston never mention sea level falls in Oslo?”  (The North American land mass is sinking; there are other areas in the world where the earth is uplifting.)  

“What is the difference between loving humanity and loving unlovely individuals?” 

“What are you willing to sacrifice in this situation? Your pride, perhaps?” 

“Where the line between community safety (or integrity) and individual liberty?” 

“What are we shocked at behaviors which are endemic in human history?” 

“Why not make the minimum wage one million dollars per year?” 

“Does this situation deserve unrestrained fear?” 

“What would be risk-free in a universe where the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is true?” 

“I’m intrigued with the idea of insisting leadership teams be representative and inclusive. Would that extend to a balance of liberals and conservatives, say, in college faculty?  Whites and Asians in the NBA?” 

“Do you care who gets the credit for this good thing?” 

“What questions are we now not allowed to ask, and why not?” 

I ask these questions not to be snarky or clever, but with a genuine intent of exploring ideas.  The point of questions like these is to challenge overly simplistic assumptions.  Questions are useful to sustain conversation. 

Notice in many of these questions I’m hoping to help people explore a limiting principle. How do you know when you’ve gone too far?  Where do you draw a line, and why?   People with agency – the ability to make decisions – need intelligent and wise frameworks to decide on limiting principles.  The Ten Commandments, for example, are a set of limiting principles.   

Over the years I’ve made notes in my journal with the shorthand label “RTS” – “Reminder to self.”  Here’s a collection of them, in no particular order:

Reminder to self: Money solves money problems.   

Reminder to self:  Everyone you meet today is waging an inner battle you can’t see.  Be gentle.

Reminder to self: Rationality is not about knowing facts, but about recognizing which facts are relevant.

Reminder to self:  Opportunities are obligations with a pretty face.  Everything worthwhile still has costs, even if the net positive benefit is worth the cost. 

Reminder to self:  What I really need is more focus because I have all the time I need.

Reminder to self: Always play the long game (health, relationships, finances)

Reminder to self:  It’s bad when our teams get into rework, and disastrous when we get stuck in rehashing.

Reminder to self:  Competitive advantage is found in uneven distributions. 

Reminder to self: Solitude is not loneliness. 

Reminder to self:  There is more to reality than can fit in a spreadsheet.  “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Einstein)

Reminder to self:  Other people are thinking about you far less than you think they’re thinking about you. 

Reminder to self:  Ingenuity is the most limiting resource. 

Reminder to self:  Calendars are more useful than to-do lists for allocating time and energy to the most valuable work.

Reminder to self:  It’s not “Pay me or pay me later,” but “Pay me now or pay me more later.”  It’s not a can that you kick down the road.  It’s a grizzly bear cub and grows up meaner.  (There are exceptions to this but they’re relatively rare.)

Reminder to self: We become what we do.

Reminder to self:  Overcome excuses by asking “Do I have a knowing problem or a doing problem?”

Reminder to self: It’s not about you.

Reminder to self: The well-trained apprentice is a world-changer.

Reminder to self:  You have the foremost power of deciding where to put your attention, and energy. 

Reminder to self:  The world is more improved by your example than your opinion.

Reminder to self:  There are learning opportunities every day, but we need to pay attention and create time to reflect on events

Reminder to self:  A good education is expensive.  Second-rate education is far more expensive, because you learn the wrong things and waste years doing the wrong things.

Reminder to self:  Every path has a puddle.

Reminder to self: Momentum is built by accumulating small successes.

Reminder to self:  If you really want to do something, do it while you can. Someday may arrive too late.

Reminder to self:  Big opportunities arise from big problems

Reminder to self: You’ll have to climb a mountain to get to simplicity on the far side of complexity.

Reminder to self: Don’t put your faith in the common culture most everyone swims in

Reminder to self:  Even in fearful situations you still have the power of choice

Reminder to self:  Of course your first effort will be meh.  The power is in getting started and then improving.

Reminder to self: Excuses are incompatible with excellence.

Reminder to self: if something can’t go on forever, it will stop.

Reminder to self: Growth begins at the edge of comfortable.

Reminder to self: Never become content with mediocrity.

Reminder to self: Time is the most valuable currency in the workplace.

Reminder to self: Meetings are tools (means to an end) not an event. 

Reminder to self:  Time is not in short supply — but attention and focus are.

Reminder to self: Boldness brings its own kind of genius.

Reminder to self: Hope without action is not a strategy.

Reminder to self: Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

Reminder to self: Individuals play the game, and teams win the championship.

Reminder to self: Any time you see complexity you can look for opportunities. 

Reminder to self: Instead of looking for hundreds of reasons to quit, see the thousands of reasons not to give up.

Reminder to self: You maximize the rate of learning by tightening the feedback loops. 

Reminder to self: Even pigs fly when the tornado comes. Don’t translate occasional incidents into normal expectations.

Reminder to self: Gratitude energizes us forward; resentments and bitterness shackle us to the past.  

Reminder to self:  Maintain a sea-anchor of skepticism and realism to prevent your optimism from foundering in rough seas.

Reminder to self: Uncertainty is why we need leadership – and all leadership begins with self-leadership.

Reminder to self:  There is a big difference between wanting something, and purposefully deciding to get it.

Reminder to self: Busy is a dangerous word.

Reminder to self: Complexity naturally happens. Simplicity requires intelligence and action.

Reminder to self: Yesterday is yesterday.  I get to start again today. 

Reminder to self: We all make mistakes.  What defines us is how we respond to failure.

Reminder to self: You can’t delegate culture.

Reminder to self: Delegate does not mean abdicate.

Reminder to self:  The stupidity of the past need not be the future; the foolishness of others need not be contagious.

Reminder to self: You are always being evaluated.

Reminder to self: If all we needed was more information, we’d all be multimillionaires with 6-pack abs.

People commonly cite “Inequality” as justification for all kinds of governing decisions (political governments at multiple levels, and private corporate governance). 

Inequality exists, and no governing body can completely “solve” this.  Let’s strive to think clearly and carefully about inequality – its sources, its effects, and what can be done.

Note: I’m going to stick with the word ‘inequality’ because it’s measurable, whereas the popular word ‘equity’ is highly subjective when used to describe socioeconomic conditions. As for the “It’s not fair, and that’s wrong” response… yes, much in life is unfair.  That’s reality.  That’s the opportunity to work hard to make things better.

Inequality comes from multiple sources:

There are inequalities originating in natural/genetic capabilities.  Men and women have different muscular structures, and different reproductive capabilities.  Some people have superior hearing and vision compared to others.  Mental acuity varies. 

Some inequalities exist because of where and when you were born, and what your family is like.  The poor in the US have a higher standard of living than the poor in many other countries, and indeed, what the poor experienced in the 1800’s in the US.  Everyone reading this was born after medical advances like antibiotics were widely available.  Not everyone had supportive and loving family.  Individuals have little and mostly no control over these inequalities.

Many inequalities are earned through hard work!   I can’t play a Chopin concerto from memory, but my daughter could because she studied and practiced piano at a high level. We saved money and invested, so after 30 years we have more financial reserves than some others.  I am fluent only in English, but I have European colleagues who are fluent in five languages.  Don’t we celebrate the inequality of the Olympic athletes who devoted years striving to improve on their natural talents to perform at the top level?

People are justly concerned about inequality that originates from human greed and power structures.  At least a portion of this kind of inequality should be “solvable,” but our experience is mixed – partial

successes and many unintended consequences.  Specifically:

• We commonly create new inequalities when we try to fix one. 
• Using government power to suppress inequality often reduces competition and excellence.  It generates entitlement thinking and behavior in some people, which does not bring out our best.
• Socialism consistently thins out the middle class because of the way wealth transfers and suppressing “the rich” destroys opportunities.  [A question I ask my friends who think socialism would be better: “Where does money come from?”  And if they say, “the government prints it” I ask, “Why then does the government bother to collect taxes?”]

I’m not against all efforts to address inequality.  I’m calling us to be intelligent and thoughtful about consequences.  What can we and should we pursue? 

• Equality before the law. 
• Respect for all fellow humans. 
• Equality of opportunity. 

Straightforward,  hard, worthwhile. When we perfectly achieve these kinds of equality there will remain other kinds. 

…

An acquaintance suggests Christianity argues for complete equality.  “Your Bible says all people are children of God and loved.”  Yes.  Yet God gave people different gifts and assigned different roles to His children.  He selected Abraham’s descendants to be His covenant people.  God selected one of the twelve tribes of these descendants to be priests, and one family in that tribe (Aaron) to serve in the inner sanctuary.  The New Testament letters speak about the different spiritual gifts and roles apportioned to people in the Church, even as the individuals are all equally adopted children into the family of God.  The Bible speaks of both equality and inequality. 

…

Our inner whiners say, “That’s not fair!”  We’re deeply sensitive to perceived unfairness.  The challenge with a standard of fair is use it consistently and unselfishly – especially given our flawed perceptions.  You may have been raised with the “You cut, I choose” method of dividing the last slice of cake between siblings.  That’s a helpful strategy because it leverages the power of our mutual relationships, and certainly better than “Heads I win, Tails you lose.” 

What lies deeper than our sense of fairness is a desire for justice.  This, too, can be deeply problematic.  Justice is about wholeness, completeness.  It’s dangerous to put adjectives like social, economic, political, and racial in front of the word justice.  The sincere desire to optimize on one dimension makes us likely to create injustice (which is a form of inequality) in our wake. 

…

Yes, we should work to reduce systemic inequality.  Treating it as an abstract “it” or “them” isn’t effective – systems of behaviors are changed by individuals who commit to a better way.  The world is more improved by your example than your opinion.  Work within your sphere of influence, person to person.  Collective transformed behavior of individuals will lead to changed systems (for better and for worse). 

Wise people take their calling seriously, themselves not so much.

Elias Beadle observed “Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not.” This is partly because we’re just foolish and silly at heart.  We know it, and so we try hard to look better than we really are.  (It’s partly because we desperately want to be known and we’re terrified to be known, too — a topic for another time.)

I’m convinced C.S. Lewis didn’t work hard to invent his Dufflepuds characters in “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” — he was just a good observer of people.  The Dufflepuds consistently misinterpreted Coriakin (the magician leader of the island) as a tyrant when he was simply trying to educate and protect them from their foolishness.  Their self-identity as “uglified” shapes their behavior.  They all instantly agree with their Chief without considering what he says.  They have infallible logic such as “Water is powerful wet stuff.”  They have goofy ideas about saving time such as cooking potatoes before they plant them.  The Dufflepuds are us.

How many times have we gone through something unpleasant, or that didn’t turn out well, and confidently said “Next time / Next year it will be better” and do nothing.  Then, when the outcome is the same we confidently say “Next time / Next year it will be better.”  It’s useful, I supposed, but still silly.

We love magic tricks and illusions.  We like to be fooled if it’s entertaining and no one suffers any real loss.  Brunello Cucinelli observed that there are three things you cannot buy: Fitness, Diet, and Looking after your soul.  These you must do yourself. Yet we will impulse buy “instant” solutions for fitness, weight loss, better skin, getting paid without work, and BOGO (‘buy one, get one’) deals for things we never knew we needed.  Being a silly species has made some people rich.

Entire college educations in grand subjects are available online for free, but consumption is minimal. Have you noticed that bathroom humor, videos of people getting smacked in their groin or head, and dogs and cats being, well, dogs and cats, never run out of audiences?  We all chuckle at these.  How many collective lifespans have been spent watching LOL cat videos, and how many months of power plant activity were required?  

Every parent has watched a toddler trying to sneak around, thinking no one would notice their exaggerated walk or crawl.  Perhaps you used the strategy of “If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.”  We are amused at babies looking in mirrors, not recognizing themselves.  I can only imagine the magnitude of God’s love for us when adults behave the same way.  

Take a moment (or a few microseconds) to recall a time when you confidently, proudly, boldly believed and acted on a “truth” that you now realize was completely wrong.  Even a few of these instances should forever puncture our pride.  But it doesn’t.  We’re a silly species.

A cursory review of the history of medicine, machines, exploration, and means of government should likewise be sobering.  We look back, scoff, and say “What foolishness!”  I agree with George Orwell’s observation that some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.  We’re currently practicing all the foolish ideas that people 50 or 100 years from now will disdain.  We’re a silly species.

Laughter – especially laughter at ourselves – is a gift we should enjoy.  Laughing at our silliness is the healthy transition point to deciding to be less silly going forward.  Because we do have a serious calling, with genuine joy.