I just finished watching the New Season opening for American Idol with my kids.  (We taped it)  Minniapolis was the setting for future idol hopefuls to preen their skills before the judges.  As a converted Idol fan, courtesy of my teenagers, we were all in stitches with some of the contestants desperate antics and obvious delusion about their skill set and blatant lack of talent.

A comment that was reiterated frequently  by the judges was, "you don't sound like yourself" .  There were also an amazing number of hopeful contestants in Minneapolis who seemed to loose their voices; one going so far as to appear to be listening to music from an imaginary earpiece while mouthing the words with barely any recognizable vocalization.

Another frequent mistep was contestants who forgot their lines. Some merely mumbled, others made up new words and some just walked off the stage.  All in all, the pretenders took center stage in this carnival of absurdity.  One appearing wrapped in a bizzare combination of  plastic;  a sorry copy cat version of presumably Uncle Sam wrapped in the American flag with a Rocky Balboa twist....the over-sized red boxing gloves. 

It occured to me that sometimes the stage mirrors the truth we obscure in life.  In my limited experience with Blogging, I can identify with some of the mistakes of the non-winners.  So many hopefuls, eager for recognition forgot who they were; some of them even forgot who they were trying to be.  Although everyone professed to want to be the next Amerian Idol, an original, the saddest auditions were those where you felt you were watching a "dreadful " (A Simon Cowell favorite) rendition of a hopeless impersonator. 

It's sadly easy to do this in writing as well, especially within the context of creating content for a Blog.  It's tempting to think that you can try to imitate someone's style , language or even topic.  The problem is that because it's not really something that comes from one's core or passion, it transalates with a thin, faltering lack of conviction and lacks the ability to connect.  It's hard to dig deeper and sometimes scary to be transparent, but that's the essence of successful communication or auditions.  It seems to me that every Blog entry is like an audition.  It's not about being perfect, it's about being real.

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