Goodbye 04-05-05

And sometimes when I'm speaking at a seminar, the room is
deathly silent. At first, I thought it was because I was
boring the people to the point of apathy. Then later I
caught on to the fact the attendees were incredibly
silent... because... they were paying such rapt attention to
what I was saying.

In
any case, when I began posting "The Boron Letters" on my
website, I wasn't getting my normal flow of feedback. So I
sent a short e-mail message to my announcement list
basically asking, "Hey, is there anybody out there paying
attention to these letters? Am I wasting my time posting
them?"

Shortly after that, I was having a "bad hair day" and
Theresa (without my knowledge) wrote to my announcement list
an e-mail saying I could use a bit of cheering up. She said
maybe some of my readers could send me an e-mail to brighten
my spirits.

In
any case, these two particular announcements created the
first flood of e-mails to me. And when I say "flood" I mean
a torrent of e-mails.

A
few people even asked me if Theresa's writing about me
having a bad hair day was some sort of marketing trick. That
maybe I was using it to set people up to sell them
something. That was very few people but still, it irritated
me.

First, as I said, I had no idea Theresa was sending such an
e-mail. And certainly, it was not some sort of marketing
trick. It was just her way of trying to lighten my load a
little bit.

You know, people seem to watch and read what I'm doing so
intensely and so carefully, they are always trying to figure
out my motive for doing what I do. Much of the time, they're
trying to figure out a motive which simply doesn't exist.
You ever hear the old joke about the two psychiatrists
walking towards each other down a sidewalk? As they approach
each other one of them says, "Hello" and they both
keep on walking their separate ways. But the other
psychiatrist says to himself, "Gee, I wonder what he
meant by that?"