15 More Minutes

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I said that I was interviewed for a profile being run in the Tri-Cities Business Review? I just received a blast e-mail from the TCBR and my photo is the first thing I see when I open it up. Here is a link to the article. I don't have any problem with it other than they have a quote wrong--unfortunately, it is the quote that appears beneath my photo in the e-mail. There is a word or two missing and somehow nobody noticed that the sentence there doesn't make sense. Great...now I look like a buffoon who can't string a few words together into a coherent sentence. The best part? The quote is about communication.

Reading through the article, I think the writer did a decent job, but it's a little uncomfortable for me to be on that end of the interview/camera. I'm used to being the one asking the questions and taking the photos, so when I'm the subject I get a little self-conscious. Reading through the article there is a quote when I said, "I don't go out to sell," he said. "Work finds me." That sounds a whole lot differently now than it did when I said it. The writer was asking me about how I find work and I explained that I am not a salesperson (I've never been comfortable in that role) and I don't really go out to sell. I have no doubt that I said the words, but as an out-of-context quote they make me sound arrogant. Blech.

I've never been comfortable being interviewed. In the winter of 2007, the Saginaw News ran a feature story about me on the front page (below the fold) of the paper. The angle of the article was about an American designer designing the logo for the 2007 Ontario Hockey League All-Star Classic. The article came out great and included a photo of me. At that time I was sporting a VERY full beard--we're talking Grizzly Adams full. A lot of people recognized me and complimented me on the article and on the OHL work, but one person went a step further (I think I wrote about it in my old blog, actually). She sent an anonymous letter to my home, the letter read:

Hi Shawn,
I saw this picture of you in the Saginaw News on 1-30-07.
I have one question to ask: Don’t you think you are getting to old to have that long dirty looking hair? And that silly hair on your face, you sure could use a razor.
a Reader of the News

Nice, huh? One of these days I need to dig up that letter, scan it and post it here. Until then, I leave you with the full photo that was taken for the article. I was hoping they'd use the whole shot and show off the window graphics, but no such luck.