Going to college in the midwestern, a guy who wore a nametag every day was about the most deviant and bizarre and conspicuous person walking the streets.
People viewed my little sticker as a social faux pas at best, and a crime against humanity at worst.
Which is not a judgment against them. Just example of what happens when you unleash your weirdness in the wrong place.
Because when I relocated to the most populous, competitive, expensive and uninhibited city in the nation, suddenly my idea wasn’t so crazy anymore.
I was just another one of the freaks.
Think about it. At any given moment, some guy wearing a nametag is like, the seventeenth strangest thing you’ve seen that day. Considering there is also guy dressed as a storm trooper ordering coffee, an eighty year old street performer doing show tunes with his dancing mohawked chicken, some dude riding a unicycle while walking his three legged dog, a shirtless personal trainer perfectly executing a complete upper body workout on a single subway bar, and a homeless man peeing in a telephone booth, it’s safe to say that wearing a nametag is a benign act.
Being just another one of the freaks is simply a matter of perspective.
The point is, regardless of where we live and what our thing is, we all need people who think our crazy ideas aren’t so crazy. Or at the very least, people who are as crazy or crazier than we are, if only to make us feel normal by comparison.
Godin said it best in his book about the positive side of weirdness:
The weird are now more important than the many, because the weird are the many. But we are at our best when we’re weird, and when we’re enabling others to become weird as well. Those brave enough to seek weird will thrive.
Remember, geography is not destiny. Maybe the circus secretly wants to run away with you.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you unleashing your weirdness in the wrong place?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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