Day 23,702: Staying Open to Being Engaged.
“I always want to remain teachable,” states Kate Ahl, principal of SimplePinMedia.com. The irony was that Ahl made the comment while teaching about her area of marketing expertise on her podcast of a similar name – Simple Pin Podcast. She had just come back from teaching at one of the largest social media conferences in the nation, but was being careful to acknowledge that no matter her level of expertise, there is always new information and she cautions herself to remain open to being taught.
The pod statement was juxtaposed to my just coming out of a new community activist group and meeting M, a member of the Stockton University Center on Successful Aging – SCOSA for short. The Center’s core mission is to encourage older residents to “age successfully” through vital involvements and engagement in their community.”
To Be In Touch
Teachable, Involvement and Engagement are not synonyms, but their commonality is an ability to (with apologies to Ma Bell, the original Crone), reach out and touch someone, or be touchable yourself.
Tomorrow, I’ll be reaching out to M to give him my contact information and exchange information on some key information sources we want to share with each other. None of it has to do with the purpose of the community meeting we both attended, but by just being out and about we’ll both likely score a double win – learning more about the activist organization we joined and learning more about the services we hopefully can share regarding active aging.
Life is coming full circle. I graduated college with an advanced degree in public health policy. My first job out of college made logical sense with a position at a health care policy consultancy firm dedicated to NJ medical institutions serving the elderly. I then got hold of my senses and realized I was supposed to be a writer and went back to the skills of my undergraduate degree to launch a career in communications, that somehow morphed into a marketing career.
Now, when I’ve started combining two skill sets (one that I forgot I had) and started writing about aging, who do I meet, but M! And, guess who I’m going to meet tomorrow? Kate Ahl! We have a 15 minute conference call to discuss Pinterest – not for either the activist or the aging projects, but for my day job. Still, you know, the conversation will somehow come full circle because, it seems, everything always does.
Staying Focused on Common Sense Gun Safety: Tonight was the second meeting of the
new South Jersey chapter of Moms Demand Action. One woman introduced herself by saying, “The Millenials say they are now going to solve the problem that we Boomers didn’t. I’m not ready to give up, and think we Boomers can still make change happen.” If you’re a similar-minded Boomer, consider how you, too, can become involved , engaged, or teachable. It can be a mind “opening experience.
The Crone Diary 