I’m curious: what does a non-dysfunctional family look like? My dad was an alcoholic. He died from this damned sickness. His parents did, too. Both of them. My mom has the same addiction, plus a whole bunch of other issues. Wait—we’ll get to me and my own quirks later. But I grew up in a broken home that felt like hell. My cousins’ dad drank, too. My classmates either didn’t have fathers, or their dads had the same “talent” as mine, or they were abusers. One boy’s mom left him with a grandmother for the sake of a new husband. Another friend of mine abandoned her daughter with the father to go find a new love. And now, I’m standing guard by the bathroom so my son doesn’t waste water. I heard somewhere that this kind of control is a sign of a dysfunctional family. So, I guess I follow the same pattern now. Not because I’m stingy with the water, though. I’m here because our power grid is being shelled, electricity is hit-or-miss, and we have one 50-liter water heater for everyone. There a...
In my web writing work, I’ve developed one simple rule. My hack has proven its effectiveness time and time again. Subscribe to my blog while you’re here, and in the meantime, I’ll tell you about my unobvious writing hack. Let me start with a bit of backstory. The Backstory Behind My Web Writing Hack Discovery I once had a client who was a fan of what I call “rigid SEO.” It is my category for a certain type of creative brief I receive. “Rigid SEO” is when a client demands you use keywords exactly as they are written for direct, exact-match placement, even if it’s grammatically incorrect, sounds unnatural, or feels bizarre. But a task is a task, so I got down to web content writing. After receiving a brief like this, I started gathering information. I always do so because my intuitive approach to web writing has never failed me. Once I’ve collected enough material, the core idea for the article comes to me on its own. So, I read and delved deep into the topic and opened a Google Doc to s...