For the second year I’m hosting the Avenue Z Virtual Food Drive (you HAVE to see the new cool site. Click here and Pledge!), and I’m hoping for TWICE the donations as last year (click here for the original story). Since I’m stepping up the publicity and the goal, I figured I better step up my efforts to get the donations. So last night on my way home from work, I stopped a few blocks from home to go door-to-door.

As always, I’m amazed at people’s generosity. Strangers bid me welcome into their houses, asked me to sit and rummaged through their cupboards. It was pitch black outside, and they didn’t know me from anybody, yet with little effort on my part I collected 4 bags of canned goods.

In one home, a woman invited me to sit as she searched for donations, even though she assured me she had given and given and given and probably had nothing left. “But I don’t want to send you away empty handed,” she said.

I chatted with her and her daughter for a while, and then the woman’s eyes lit up. “Oh goodness. I’m helping you, and maybe you can help me!” she said when I handed her my card. “You are a speaker, right? Well I run a group, and we need speakers every month….”

Lo and behold, I landed a speaking gig! Ok, so it’s a talk to the octogenarians at the Ladies’ Friendship Circle at the nearby Presbyterian church, but still!  The president said I’d probably be bigger than their bingo nights! Almost every time I go out to give a presentation, I end up with more business and more speaking engagements. An opportunity is an opportunity.

As the sole employee of Avenue Z Writing Solutions, it’s easy to isolate myself from others. Even though I now have a beautiful office of my own, I still come to work alone, spend most of the day alone and stay in my box. But I’m working to expand my network of business and personal connections. I recently joined a networking group called the San Diego Coastal Professional Group, which is comprised of local business owners of all types (including my new printer, Mario from SDPrint.com). We meet for breakfast once every two weeks to share education, encourage referrals and, well, eat breakfast. The dues for the group are minimal, and I’m hoping my efforts will really pay off. I want to put down deeper roots here in San Diego, both for myself and my business. And almost every time I reach out, I benefit.

PLEASE, please, please  stop by www.avenuezfooddrive.com to pledge to give to a local food bank. We’re looking for FOUR TONS of food donations to food banks around the world!

This morning I paid a visit to my friendly, neighborhood printing store (PB Printing), where Mario the manager was on hand to listen to my latest tales of printing mishaps.

“I have a business card crisis,” I announced. “I am trying to print my new cards with the new logo, and two printers have produced disappointing results. See, this one is too flimsy, and this one was cut too small. And I have 1000 of each! Don’t you think I need to redo them?”

Mario paused, thinking for a moment. “Yes, this one’s a little thin. And it’s so strange that these cards are so small, but honestly — and I don’t mean to talk myself out of a sale — honestly, you’re just being too picky.”

Too picky? Didn’t he see that the cards were not PERFECT? Couldn’t he tell that I was ready to pay yet more money to make everything EXACTLY the way I had imagined it?

Mario continued, “I know these little things mean a lot to you, but frankly, no one else will care. It’s a business card. It holds your information. These are both perfectly acceptable, and I’m sure you can think of better ways to invest in your business that will pay off more than this.”

Ahhh. Mario is indeed wise. Although my new business cards are not PERFECT, not one recipient would look at them and say, “Wow. Bad cards. I’m never calling her.” If I hadn’t talked to Mario, I would have gone to yet a third discount online printer to try to improve on the cards, and I would have ended up with another 1000.

Things I learned this morning:

1. Experts are helpful.
   Talking to Mario and benefiting from his years of experience, I saved myself time and hassle, not to mention more money. Thank you, Mario! (Plus, by talking me out of these cards, he probably earned himself another sale the next time I need to print something.)
2. It’s easy to lose perspective.
   As Mario pointed out — these are just business cards. You get them. You give them. Some stand out. Some don’t. It’s just no big deal.
3. Perfection is tough to find.
   The whole logo and site redesign started because I ran out of the old business cards. I needed to update my address and add other services to my site. Thus began a complete redesign that took several weeks, about a thousand bucks and a whole lot of worrying. And I had envisioned the perfect business card to be the culmination of my hard work.
4. Two thousand business cards is a lot.
   My original business card order in 2007 was for a thousand cards. It took me two years to give them all out. Now I have 2000 new cards. Anyone want one? Or a dozen?

About 2 years ago, I attended a workshop on how to write electronic newsletters. I exchanged cards with a guy I’ll call Paul because I can’t really remember his name.

We actually corresponded a couple of times in the first month after we met, but I really don’t know Paul. I don’t need to buy anything from Paul. None of the people I know need to buy anything from Paul. But I’ve been getting Paul’s electronic newsletters about once a month for 2 years. And, in today’s world of furious networking, I feel obliged to keep getting Paul’s newsletter. I fear that if I sever the connection to Paul by unsubscribing from his newsletter, I’ll make Paul feel bad, or I’ll miss the opportunity of a lifetime because I no longer have his contact number to make an important connection for my business.

I’ve gotten to the point where his email (which just arrived) in my inbox makes me wince. I haven’t opened one of them in at least 20 editions. They just sit there and make me feel guilty for hating them. Perhaps you have to have grown up in a Catholic family to understand my guilt, but I hope you get the point.

The same goes for other vague connections I’ve made. I receive invitations to become a fan on Facebook for a company whose owner I met once. I get requests to contribute to fundraising for causes I don’t necessarily want to support, sent by people I’ve corresponded with a half dozen times. And I feel an obligation to keep all my connections, to support all efforts by independent people with gumption — because wouldn’t it be great if they supported me?

Is that what social networking today has led to? We’re all running around trying to scratch backs with hopes that we’ll have our backs scratched when we need it. Are we all afraid of losing the ability to be an important spoke in an important hub, so we stretch our network as far as the eye can see and never “defriend” anyone because we may need them later? Or is it just me?

I even feel uncomfortable writing this blog post. What if Paul reads it and recognizes himself? What if a casual connection feels slighted and doubts that I’m a real friend? And a bigger question…. how can I (we) expect to be real friends with everybody? I have 224 connections on LinkedIn, 1907 followers on Twitter and 179 Facebook friends, and I’d consider myself a moderately successful networker. Is this really all necessary to live, work, date and play in today’s society?

(Err… PS — feel free to reach out to me on any of the three networks — the more the merrier at this point, right?)

According to the Global Language Monitor, the word (phrase?) Web 2.0 became the millionth word of the English language today at 10:22 Stratford-on-Avon time. It barely beat out the “word” n00b, a classic from the gamer community, a disparaging term meaning a neophyte in game playing. Others in the top 15 for the race to 1,000,000,000 were Octomom, sexting, defriend and recessionista.

To defriend someone is to remove him from your list of contacts on MySpace, Facebook or other social networking sites. An ad campaign from Burger King asked people to defriend 10 people to receive a free Whopper. How can that really be a word? Recessionista is a portmanteau of recession and fashionista, meaning someone who strives to dress chic even though she’s broke. When the economy gets going again, this word should disappear. So why does it need to go into our permanent collection?

The Global Language Monitor says it has rules for determining when a word really becomes legitimate enough for the collection. It has to appear at least 25,000 times in a variety of geographic locations and media. The man behind the project said a word is created about once every 98 minutes.

As a professional writer, my first response is argh! These made up words and language additions drive me insane. Do you realize how long it takes to dig to find if Octomom has to be capitalized or hyphenated? For gosh sake’s… did you see that n00b uses zeros? How the heck am I supposed to know that?

This brings up the question of finding the 2009 ultimate style guide. The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has, give or take, about a quarter of a million words and definitions. The edgy, off-color Urban Dictionary claims to have 4,032,262 definitions written since 1999. The word of the day today is beat feet, which means to leave a selected area, as in “My bitter ex-girlfriend showed up at the party I was at, so Jeff gave me a heads up and I beat feet.” Or should we rely on the Coffee house fact finders who post to Wikipedia? The Associated Press Stylebook just doesn’t help at times like these.

Here’s the top 16 near 1,000,000,000:

• 1,000,000: Web 2.0 – The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.
• 999,999: Jai Ho! – The Hindi phrase signifying the joy of victory, used as an exclamation, sometimes rendered as “It is accomplished”. Achieved English-language popularity through the multiple Academy Award Winning film, “Slumdog Millionaire”.
• 999,998: N00b — From the Gamer Community, a neophyte in playing a particular game; used as a disparaging term.
• 999,997: Slumdog – a formerly disparaging, now often endearing, comment upon those residing in the slums of India.
• 999,996: Cloud Computing – The ‘cloud’ has been technical jargon for the Internet for many years. It is now passing into more general usage.
• 999,995: Carbon Neutral — One of the many phrases relating to the effort to stem Climate Change.
• 999,994: Slow Food — Food other than the fast-food variety hopefully produced locally (locavores).
• 999,993: Octomom – The media phenomenon relating to the travails of the mother of the octuplets.
• 999,992: Greenwashing – Re-branding an old, often inferior, product as environmentally friendly.
• 999,991: Sexting – Sending email (or text messages) with sexual content.
• 999,990: Shovel Ready – Projects are ready to begin immediately upon the release of federal stimulus funds.
• 999,989: Defriend – Social networking terminology for cutting the connection with a formal friend.
• 999,988: Chengguan – Urban management officers, a cross between mayors, sheriff, and city managers.
• 999,987: Recessionista – Fashion conscious who use the global economic restructuring to their financial benefit.
• 999,986: Zombie Banks – Banks that would be dead if not for government intervention and cash infusion.
• 1,000,001: Financial Tsunami – The global financial restructuring that seemingly swept out of nowhere, wiping out trillions of dollars of assets, in a matter of months