Here’s the dirty secret about reporters: they steal from Wikipedia. Shamelessly, in fact. How do I know? Because I see things I wrote for articles magically paraphrased in all sorts of press – collections of facts that did not exist before I collected them.

Bloggers do for their posts. People do it for their opinions. Investors do it for their trading strategies. Reporters do it for their stories. Wikipedia, for all its inaccuracies, is the jumping off point for things we’d never question trusting. And yet, what company do you know that has ever meaningful contributed to community that has the ability to define them?

When you think about influence, think about where it comes from. In other words, it’s not the trendsetting magazines that are important but the places where they find out about trends. That’s where you go because the rest is just too inefficient.

But remember, that’s a very substantial power. Abuse makes it meaningless.

(Also, if I wasn’t physically unable to fit one more thing in my day, I would jump on this opportunity just for fun)

I have this very intense fear of being regular. Of becoming normal. Of being just like everyone else. I have no idea where it comes from or why it colors the way I think about things. But it does.

I think it’s a desire not to be tied down. A deep paranoia of that “quiet desperation.” Not liking what you do, living vicariously through others. To wake up one day and realize that if you really had something to say, there’d be no way you could tell anyone. You know, that day where you reach for your revolver.

Whatever. It’d be real easy to get caught up in that. That being different is better. And if you’re different then you’re better. Here’s the thing I’m starting to realize: It says way more about me than it does about everybody else. It comes from a place of deep insecurity. If it creates anxiousness, it’s probably not coming from self-comfort or assuredness.

It’s not something to be proud of or hold up against other people, because frankly, it has nothing to do with other people. Some amorphous, reactionary fear over something that not only have complete control over but have the ability to define as well is not exactly an improvement.

Like most things, it’s internal and that’s where I need to direct the attention.

Here’s the thing about me: I don’t really have many special skills. I can’t code, never trained in marketing, no financial background, and I certainly don’t have ‘years in the business’ behind me. But I’m doing alright working in precisely those fields.

I think in one sense, specializing in any of those areas is often disadvantage because it subverts your priorities and how you look at the world.

Think about the phrase “making connections.” A lot of people confuse it with seeing connections. Any idiot can see a connection. Making them is a totally different animal. It’s constructive process. It’s creative process. It’s taking two unrelated things and forging a relationship that wasn’t there before you found it.

Or think about networking. It seems safe to translate it as “meeting people” but how is that a network? A network is interconnected of nodes who share and receive information. In other words, job fairs and Linkedin are completely worthless. Networking, then, is about more than yourself – it’s current that you tap into and simultaneously power.

Most people lack a very basic but fundamental skill – the ability to look at things beyond the most obvious level. I think calling it a skill is generous, it’s more of a way of thinking or how you carry yourself. They can spot connections and have a huge Rolodex of contacts, but they couldn’t connect two unrelated things you if needed it and none of the nodes in their network have ever actually transfered packets of information.

Most people will never know what it’s like to get so excited that you have to pace to contain yourself. It’s all logical to them – spend to earn, ‘a lot of people are doing this,’ wait for approval, ‘that seems like a bad idea,’ ‘it’s the weekend, I’ll get to it Monday,’ whatever. And in the process, they cripple themselves irrelevant.

They forget that it’s all a hustle. They forget all the operative words: make, build, design, discover. Those aren’t business cliches. They are verbs, actions, processes. You don’t do any of that behind your desk waiting for emails. It doesn’t stop when you leave the office. It doesn’t stop ever.