Me, me, me.

As a kid, I was obsessed with biographies. While other kids were reading this and that, I was devouring the books on a half a dozen shelves that made up the biography section of the elementary school library. George Washington, Ben Franklin, Jim Thorpe –– I gobbled them up. But then, just like that, I lost interest. A few rows down, I found the Hardy Boys, Treasure Island, Charlotte’s Web and more.

I think biographies became too much about other people. I still read one occasionally –– in fact, Patti Smith’s Just Kids is on my nightstand right now –– but biographies are generally not my thing. Fiction was able to take me to more places that I wanted to visit, places with treasures that were valuable to me.

It’s a pattern.

Just after college I had a girlfriend who accused me of being self-centered. She was probably right. So I moved on, most likely in search of a relationship in which it could be all about me without culpability.

Then I was an early adopter of Twitter. I lost interest, ignored it and eventually dissolved the account. People’s little trivialities weren’t important enough to me.

Ah, but then I re-engaged with it.

Twitter had become something quite different. It could convey something important or potentially important to someone I valued. Currently, Open Culture, Brain Pickings, Mashable and Dave Trott, make it feel like my own personal newspaper. In Conan’s tweets, I even have my own funny pages. It’s been around awhile now, but it feels like it’s been around forever, the way I rely on my little stream of bits and bobs and, often enough, inspiration.

Such are human beings. People want to connect. They are driven to connect. It’s like there’s an automatic yearning, and an implicit standard that pertains to relationships ­–– it says that if the relationship is superficial, press on. So press on we do for something deeper and meaningful. Or we move out. It depends on how much me there is for us.

If brands are like relationships, and I believe they are, this is why social networks are not enough. Commerce and real brand building takes place in communities of interest. And the best communities are communities of importance. That’s where we ultimately find a home in which we can thrive.

It’s also why creativity is so important. Because nothing can communicate real love like something that has been supremely crafted, and nothing can communicate real love more than mediums like film and installations. Those things can become personal. They speak directly to me, with deep emotion, just like the best fiction engages me and allows me to discover stuff, all on my own. Conversations are a good starting place. Biographical facts about what I do and about what you do are necessary to gather information and establish common ground. But art –– or even something with a little art in it –– speaks to me like nothing else.

I was never interested in advertising, not really. But communication and the power of ideas – that’s been my obsession. I’ve remained, and will probably remain, obsessed with how to really move people, compel them. For me, nothing is more fascinating. And I will find out ways to do that – Wherever. And if Wherever can’t do it for me, I will go elsewhere.