Last Tuesday, I popped into the post office to mail a few packages.

I say "popped," but I'm not sure that's the best word: It's never a quick visit. The line is always long. A better way to describe it might be to say I sentenced myself to do time there (15 minutes to life?).

Just up ahead, an older man was already at the counter, where he was trying to mail a letter he'd stamped.

The postal worker was explaining that he couldn't mail it: He'd have to buy another stamp, because the man had affixed the stamp by sticking a piece of clear Scotch tape over it.

"You can't use tape on a stamp," the postal worker said.

The man: "Why not?"

Postal worker: "Because I can't cancel it."

The man: "But why would you want to cancel it?"

Postal worker: "Because that's how we make money."

The man: "But I don't understand why you want to cancel my stamp?"

Postal worker: "Because that's how I get paid."

This went on for a few minutes. The line snaked longer. The woman behind me sighed audibly. Same, girlfriend.

The man with the Scotch-taped stamp—at first befuddled—was sinking into personal outrage.

The postal worker—at first apathetic—was becoming increasingly emphatic.

The problem, of course, was that each was looking at the world through his own lens.

And each thought the other a complete idiot.

The Scotch-taped-stamp guy thought the post office wanted to cancel his stamp before he used it. He thought the word "cancel" in this context meant "to void." And why would the post office want to do that?

The postal worker could not understand why the man didn't understand that the tape would protect the stamp from being marked as used. Why can't you see that someone else could peel the tape off the stamp, and use the same stamp to pay the cable bill, which means the US Postal Service is 49 cents poorer?

(Side note: I'm not sure whether someone reusing a taped-on stamp is a real worry or just an imagined worry dreamed up by a paranoid bureaucrat. Because to me the idea of peeling tape off a sticky stamp to reuse seems dicey at best. If you've ever tried to peel a Subway sandwich sticker off a five-dollar foot-long, you know that the sticker doesn't hold up so well. But okay, Mr. Postal Worker: Them's the rules.)

Anyway, neither the customer nor the postal worker stopped to understand the other's point of view.

They didn't question whether the words they were using were the right words.

They didn't pause in the midst of this Who's on first? conversation to reset, consider the other's interpretation, backfill with some knowledge, and arrive at new ground: a shared understanding of the word "cancel" and why the USPS can't accept a Scotch-taped stamp.

You know: that empathy thing.

The thing that can help us understand the nincompoops who are the other humans we share this planet with.

Without the ability to recognize how others see the world, we end up trapped in these nonsensical conversations. We also end up locked in a righteous feeling that our view of the world is the only correct one. (Hello, politics on Facebook!)

The day after my visit to the post office, I traveled to the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio, to speak about writing and marketing to students and alumni.

I also met with whatever a group of professors is called. (I haven't yet looked it up, but please oh please I hope a group of professors is—like fish—called a "school of professors.")*

The professors are starting a "Professional Writing" course at Findlay, and they're using Everybody Writes as a textbook.

Sweet. But that's not really why I'm excited about the course.

I'm most excited about why Findlay is starting the program: The administrators feel that writing well, and with clarity, is key to success in so many careers. So not just, say, a journalism or technical writing career. But also government. And law. And business more broadly. And maybe... postal-working?

A tenet of Everybody Writes is that empathy is the key to truly effective writing. In my book, I talk about the need to swap places with your reader.

So, yeah: Write what you want to write (barf up The Ugly First Draft!)

But then swap places with your reader, and put yourself in their shoes (and their socks, shirt, hat and—heck, get right inside their skin, too). Be sure you truly understand whether you're being understood.

So that's what I'm most thrilled about: that an entire generation of Findlay grads won't see the world through just their eyes. That, maybe, if they internalize the ideas from their professional writing course at all—they'll develop empathy for their readers.

Too much to hope for? I don't think so.

A college campus is a hopeful place. It might just be the most hopeful place in the world.

So if change doesn't start there, where does it? And if not now, when?

WHY AND MIGHTY

I rarely write short. (I have a lot of feelings.)

But on the flight back from Ohio I thought about the post office and UFindlay and an essay I'd read by Paul Graham. (If you never write, Paul said, "you'll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated." So. True.)

I realized I write for a bunch of reasons. Well, four. And they all begin with the letter C.

None of the words are dirty. And none of the words are "content," either.

Read "Why I Write," and share why you write, too, right here.

WOAH IS KEY

Those clacky mechanical keyboards are back, because we love to pay a lot for retro technologies once something better replaces it. Yay! Consumerism!

I originally thought, "Why would anyone want one of these?" But holy wow is that a Scrabble keyboard?! GIMME.

FRUIT CANAL

The Red Delicious is an apple atrocity. Why are we growing billions of pounds of them each year? Hint: It's the official apple of the captive audience. Meaning: They end up in hospitals, schools, and airports, writes the New Food Economy.

Why am I sharing a story from a food site about a terrible-tasting apple? For two reasons:

MEMO-ries

In his annual letter to Amazon shareholders this week, CEO Jeff Bezos offered some helpful ideas on crafting the perfect meeting memo. Because when you're the richest guy in the universe, you can do stuff like hijack a shareholder's letter as a Trojan horse for writing inspiration.

At Amazon, memos are six pages and "narratively structured," Bezos wrote. A lot of news outlets quoted this, and not one of them defined WTF "narrative structure" actually means.

So here you go: It means that the memos have a kind of structural framework that leads the reader on a journey and helps him or her grasp the material. In other words, Amazon execs write (or re-write) with the reader in mind.

I loved this bit of color: At the start of a meeting or conference call, Bezos said, teams will silently read through memos as part of kind of Study Hall.

This sounds like a much better start to a conference call than what I usually experience: "Hello? Hello? Can you guys hear me?" and "Let's start with Brenda? Is Brenda here?"  Full letter here.

MORE MEMO-ries 

One more point about the Bezos memo-business.

The best memos, Bezos added, "are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind." Because THAT is how you build that reader-centric "narrative structure."

In other words, the best writing takes... <wait for it>... time. And that's true whether you're writing a memo or a blog post or the script for a puppet show.

Which is why I believe publishing is a thing we should do with an ASAP (As Slow As Possible) mindset.

I'm now done talking about it. But you can see how this shareholder's letter satisfyingly scratches all my itchy spots.

Remember when all Marketing had to do was market the business?

No? Me neither. Not really.

Take a look at this chart and stare Marketing in 2018 straight in the chaos that is its face.

Andy Crestodina makes the case that video should be your tactic of choice to promote your content. And you should tag your friends and contacts on social media to promote the social video that promotes the content that promotes your business.

Still with me? Kinda?

Basically: Rather than posting a headline and link on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, you need to make a tiny commercial that features you introducing your article to your following. As a writer, I love that words now have their own PR program.

Read the detailed step-by-step on how to create an engaging content commercial for social media here.

My friend Doug Kessler published this... thing this week. I don't know what to call it—a post-microsite? A blog-ebook? (Blook?)

Anyway, it calls out an ugly problem in marketing: The Doubting Stakeholder. Doug told me in an email that he thinks stakeholder buy-in (or lack thereof) "may be the single most important determinant of success in marketing—especially in big companies."

Doug's advice to deal with hating stakeholders? (Hate-holders?) "Get your stakeholders on board. Fire them up. Challenge them to raise their game. Do it in the most compelling way, by raising yours."

How? Among other things, these:

I like this piece because it highlights a problem specific enough to be believable, yet also universal enough to be relatable. Scroll through Doug's beautiful mind here.

AISLE GUY

This entry is dedicated to Aisle Guy, who was seated in my row of three seats on a flight to Boston this week. I had the window seat (seat 2A, my preferred spot). Aisle Guy was, of course, on the aisle; the seat between us was empty.

The boarding door hadn't even shut yet before Aisle Guy shoved his valise under the empty seat between us and place his folded coat and tablet on the seat itself—effectively "claiming" the extra space as his own.

That irked me. The truth was that I didn't need the space. But don't you think you might have asked, Aisle Guy? I didn't say anything to him, preferring instead to mix my own craft cocktail of one-part indignation and one-part peeved with a twist of livid.

I nursed it slowly during the entire 90-minute flight.

You could argue that I behaved no better—preferring to wallow instead of speaking up and righting the perceived wrong.

So why do otherwise good people behave badly on airplanes? It turns out that it's because of a few emotional triggers: A feeling of losing control, a desire to protect the little space we've got, and because angry is contagious. Also, Aisle Guy is a selfish jerk.

Here's the science behind bad bevavior on airplanes.

IN OTTER NEWS

People are giving animals Amazon-style reviews, and it's everything you want it to be. It started with the Oregon Zoo rating an otter (sturdy build, winter-ready, waterproof). Other zoos and science museums jumped on board. And now it just keeps getting better.