: About Me

Ever the aspiring writer since my early youth, spending countless hours creating fantastic comic book characters replete with elaborate coloring and lively dialogue, I'm also one who needed some major "attitude adjustment" from teachers and others to get my head out of the clouds, screwed on straight, and put on the right track. Like so many rebellious youngsters fighting for no particular cause, it was only after my campaign of general irreverence was swiftly met with disciplinary action that I learned some universal truths about writing, as well as life itself.

The most important truth about writing to be indelibly engraved into my mind so early on by teachers-and especially so by my English teachers, all of whom praised my writing abilities and liberally showered my report cards with "A-plusses", is that good writing is inextricably linked to clear thinking. Even today, in leading workshops, training sessions and seminars where senior executives and others come to seek out and learn new ways for making improvements to their business and professional writing, I repeat like a parrot the simple mantra drilled into me so long ago: "Good writing is nothing more than clear thinking on paper."

And so insofar as the craft of writing is concerned, I really owe everything-at least everything embodied in the universal truth of that mantra-to the many teachers, school administrators, coaches and others who tolerated my antics, or turned a blind eye to the strangely recurring propensity on my part to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as when rowdiness, roughhousing and worse spontaneously erupted to transform calm into total chaos.

I'll be eternally grateful for having been allowed, beyond reason or explanation, to advance through the education system without ever having been flunked or left back, as I ought to have been.

Throughout my life, it's been that wonderful (and tuition-free) institution of higher education and learning-called The School of Hard Knocks-that through practical hands-on experience has enriched, transformed and breathed meaningful susbstance into the myriad theories, facts, hypotheses, and hypotheticals either verbally preached or scibed in chalk on the classroom blackboard.

In looking back to refelct on it all, I believe it may have even then been fated that I'd one day fall into the clutches of the Helium tractor beam-perhaps Karma's way to exact retibution from me for having harried, harassed or flat-out harrowed so many in so few years during elementary school.

An example: when my third grade teacher gave us a pop vocabulary quiz, my scrawled response across the top of the paper was "I'm not a walking dictionary!" This earned me a poor grade (a zero is poor to the max), but maybe it was worth paying the price. It taught me that it's crucial to know your audience, position your message to connect in positive ways with that audience when circumstances warrant, and so on.

Let's now fast forward to the present. It was quite by accident that I happened to stumble across Helium in May 2007. I'd never heard of the site, until it came up one day in some search engine results in connection with something I'd been researching. And so voila! Here I am...and here you are reading all about me, which is a visit from you that I appreciate.

Now to get you to the standard bio/thumbnail sketch ...

I hail from the Bronx by birth, but also grew up and went to school in the suburbs of Bergen County, NJ ... served in the Marine Corps (which later knocked the NJ out of me) ... earned a B.A. in International Relations & Political Science from New England College ... began a PR/public affairs and corporate communications career in London, becoming a parliamentary lobbyist ... relocated to Washington, DC and continued to work in PR/corporate communications, becoming a registered lobbyist for a national trade association ... several moves (and relocations) later, I'm now in Fairfax, Virginia after having just spent seven years living and working in Panama to, among other things, help organizations to strategize, build, repair or strengthen their marketing, corporate communications, PR, business development, fundraising, reputation management, and other marketing-centric activities and programs.

The writing craft is a passion I enjoy almost as much as I do reading and absorbing information - whatever, wherever...and from all over the map, be it online or offline, in English or Urdu. Alongside these passions, I'm a lifelong student of almost every subject under the sun, and it's a good thing too, given the professional career track and multi-disciplinary, cross-functional marketing and PR work I've pursued over the course of the past 30 years.

Finally, and perhaps the most important thing I can share here about me, is that my work IS my passion.

Confucius got it right: "The person who loves what they do will never have to work another day in their life."

NOTE: See my LinkedIn profile for more bio details:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/alangray

My blog (which shamelessly, after editing and retooling, re-purposes some of what's published here on Helium):

http://weezardofoz.blogspot.com

My passion is ...

life, living and the pursuit of simple joys and pleasures within both

I know too much about ...

nothing - only the Oracle at Delphi knew it all

My parents always told me ...

to be seen and not heard (impossible to be otherwise when locked within my own bedroom)

My childhood ambition ...

was to see everything and travel everywhere...

My favorite memory ...

watching Doug Williams, John Riggins, Art Monk, Darrell Green, and the rest of the Redskins take apart the Broncos in Super Bowl XXII.

Why I write ...

is a compelling question that I've not yet satisfactorily answered, though as I write for catharsis I can safely say I'm working on it!

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

always teaches me something new about life, living, loving, and more.

My first job ...

was earning a pittance by folding up newspapers for the newspaper delivery guy.

My best moment ...

has most assuredly not yet arrived.

My inspiration ...

far exceeds my perspiration, blood, toil and tears.

Politics, News & Issues > US Elections US elections: The call to ban campaign ads

6 of 6

I for one certainly hope campaign ads of all persuasions have a long and very healthy life. For one thing, they never fail to help give me and others I know a great deal of infotainment - insight that entertains and brings on guffaws and chuckles, because the content of the ads shallowly disguise themselves as an attempted undertaking of serious analysis of the political field, the party's slate of candidates, the "issues" - and of course the relative size of each respective party's war chest, the ad itself and its cost representing as it does the relative weight being thrown behind each g...

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