Stupid Rules

Just as there are no stupid questions, I believe there are no stupid rules.

Building on this, someone told me for the second time that I have "a lot of stupid rules."

Sometimes we can't explain why we have our rules, or personal codes of conduct, written, or implicit, but each of us has rules, whether for our personal or business lives, and part of being true to ourselves and consequently true to others is being faithful to this inner code.

While a request could be considered minor in the eyes of the requester, perhaps something like asking me to personally encourage my Facebook "friends" to "fan" a business, I cannot in good conscience mix these two worlds, i.e the world of local e-newsletter writing and the world of a couple hundred or so random folks, a virtual water cooler of sorts that includes everything from blood relatives to college friends scattered across the country to long ago bosses and friends of RealSpace friends and current girlfriends of ex-boyfriends and former coworkers and everything in between.

Though maybe a couple dozen or so from my extended Facebook circle live in the neighborhood and are readers of the weekly Pipeline, the majority of the people I am connected with on the sometimes awesome and other times addictive FaceCrack don't live here, and the ones that do are already exposed to an exhaustive amount of neighborhood information compiled in a one time weekly format.

To cross a line, to start encouraging others I know to fan other people's businesses, is not aligned with my inner code. The free weekly tarot page at a local caffe only has 65 or so fans, and I've never asked anyone from my personal network to "fan" the page of the caffe which I work at, and while perhaps I could do that it just didn't feel right nor does honoring this request.

Even if I risk losing the potential sponsorship of the requester, I'd rather risk that small loss than weather the gradual erosion my personal code of conduct which remains firm despite the uncertainty I experience on a routine basis.

Though debates wage in every traditional newsroom as to how stories can continue to be told, and journalistic integrity can stay intact despite a scary future, one such way to do that is to be true to the stories that you write, and not bow to requests that might compromise your inner voice, both in your business and personal spheres... If the worlds tend to naturally intermix, as is the case for someone like me who writes based on my experiences and through the eyes of hyper-local writer writing about all local happenings, it is even more important that the inner code holds firm.

To me, the rules are smart, but in the eyes of some they might be stupid. I guess I'll just have to deal with that, and keep on moving in the only way that I know how to move, or want to move. Part of growing up is maybe finally accepting the fact that not everyone will agree with me or like me, and that energy spent on explaining myself or my perceived-as-stupid rules could be better spent on applying my time to the production of the next issue, speaking of which I need to start doing that...