The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

It was going to be quite a contentious presentation so I asked my wife to read it to make sure I was on the right side of the ‘asshole’ line.

Maybe it’s because she’s had to put up with me for 17 years, but she said I wasn’t “too bad” with my kicking, but she did say one thing about one slide she had noticed.

It was this one.

She said to me:

“Don’t call it a slide, call it a page. People value books more than presentations”.

She was – as usual – right.

And while it made me wonder how the hell I had managed to convince someone so smart to marry me, it also made me wonder why I had made such a rookie mistake.

If you don’t value you what you do, why should someone else?

And while you may think using the word ‘slide’ for ‘page’ is very small … it’s what it signifies and conveys.

Rather than communicate something personal, it comes across as something ‘production line’.

An ability to easily ‘write it off’ from their memory.

When the point I was making was very important.

Once upon a time I worked with a creative who insisted all his creative work was covered in trace paper. When I first saw him do it, I thought, ‘what a pretentious tosser’.

But then I saw the reaction from the clients when he showed it to them.

It was treated a bit more nicely. A bit more preciously.

It wasn’t for theatre, it was because he wanted his work to be valued like he valued it and he found a way to create an environment that made that happen without having to say it.

Like calling a slide a page.

Details matter.

Not just for craft, but for your own reputation.