Why am I writing this article?
I’m going to be honest with you.
I’m going to come clean.
I don’t know if this is going to help me or hurt me.
But I think it’ll help me.
It’ll definitely help you.
Here’s why:
Sometimes in life you run into problems and you need to find solutions.
Sometimes you need to find smart solutions.
‘I’d rather use my mind than break my back, I always say,’ was something said by the younger brother in the Disney movie ‘The Swiss Family Robinson.’
Okay, now let me tell you the problem.
I’m an author: AJ Diaz, a bestseller, surprisingly.
Now, I need to find more readers for my books. That’s the problem.
The solution is: marketing and adverting, yes?
Too many creative people, that doesn’t sound fun.
But it’s fun for me, because I get to find cool things like this:
As it turns out, people type in ‘Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince’ 79,000 times a month into Google. And if I write an article about ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,’ there’s a good chance that you’ll find this page.
And if you find this page, all I have to do is introduce myself and hopefully win you over. And that’s why I titled the article: Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince and Post Malone And Hawaii and Why It All Matters.
Because I didn’t want to mislead you into thinking this is a review of the aforementioned Harry Potter novel.
Although, I did trick you a little bit, because I’ve never read or seen any of the Harry Potter books or movies. I know. Something’s wrong with me. Tell me something I don’t know. I never wake up at the same time. I never work out at the same time. I never drink coffee at the same time.
But.
I wake up.
I workout.
And I drink coffee.
So things aren’t so bad.
However, though I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter series (a crime I will correct in the future), I do know that the children in the stories oftentimes used a little bit of trickery to get what they wanted. Sometimes, they break the rules. And yet things work out for them (not always, of course).
And why is that?
Why is it, that in certain stories, characters break the rules and yet they still get what they want?
This goes back to the ancient stories: like the story of the Patriarch Jacob in the Old Testament.
Heck, even Jesus said, be as wise as serpents and as soft as doves.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Shortcuts are bad. Deception is almost always bad.
But self-interest isn’t always a bad thing.
It’s hard to know when to employ tricks and to employ integrity. There’re no hard and fast rules. We learn the rules through stories: through novels and reading and movies and telling stories to one another.
For example, I know cheating in cards (Poker or gold fish or UNO) isn’t going to get me anywhere in life. Even if it’s for money. If I cheat in cards, my friends who I play with will no longer respect me. Therefore I don’t cheat in cards. I want the respect of my friends.
How about working out?
I worked out for many years, and there have been plenty of times I’ve cheated. Cheat meals, skipped days. However, I did get a six pack and I got pretty damned toned. So I learned when I could cheat. That being said, I never cheated on technique. If you cheat on bench press technique, let’s say, you’ll hurt yourself, pull a muscle and won’t be able to workout.
So.
Cheating is sometimes good.
And sometimes bad.
The children in Narnia also use tricks and cheating from time to time. And they are rewarded for it. Under certain circumstances. Not all things can be cheated.
And like I said, you must never take shortcuts.
However, you don’t need to make things harder on yourself than they need to be.
Both of these extremes must be monitored closely.
After all, life is a game (many, many games) that we must learn to play.
Like this article; it’s deceptive, but now I get to begin a discussion with you about an interesting topic. I shall now include an expert from the
What I’m doing here is called SEO.
Search Engine Optimization: the ability to write a piece of content so that it ranks in the search engine and then is found by your target audience.
It’s a powerful tool, and it must not be misused because Google will not be happy.
(of course, the easy part is getting people to your site. the harder part is developing a good relationship with the people who come).
And it’s their game:
Just like Quidditch is the game of Harry Potter.
You have to win the game, and the game within the game, right?
If you wrestle with your friends, or play board games, you must try to win the game but you also must be a pleasant person so that your friends will want to wrestle or play with you again.
And so we’re all playing games.
My game is this right now.
Rank this article for the proper keyword and then hope that I find you here.
And that we find each other.
And then I can share these thoughts with you and tell you a story about you.
This is the story:
You’re the hero of your story, like Harry Potter.
You’re main character.
God has given you something you’re passionate about.
Like Post Malone: he loves music. I bring him up because I’ve been watching videos on Youtube of him performing his music, like ‘I Fall Apart’ and ‘Candy Paint,’ and ‘Sunflower.’ I love Post Malone. To me, he’s pure.
Why?
Because he loves what he does.
You can see it, feel it, sense it.
I also know that he’s taken no shortcuts.
You can tell, listening to his music, that he knows music.
He’s good at music.
He’s worked hard at it.
And that’s why it looks so easy.
That’s always a funny concept: that the better we get at things the easier it appears to others to come to us.
It’s a beautiful thing.
You’re the hero.
You have a God given calling on your life (if you don’t believe me, read the Narnia books, all seven of them. Fun fact: JK Rowling wrote seven Harry Potters to honor the seven Narnia books. She grew up reading the Chronicles of Narnia, as did I).
But there is a dragon.
The dragon breathes fire and hunting you.
The dragon wants to steal your passion and your creativity.
Like Voldemort.
We all have a Voldemort in our lives.
It’s the insidious thing that’s trying to steal the life from you: failing health, circumstances beyond your control, circumstances within your control, additions (including addiction to social media or the new or fear or ideology — ideology being too simple explanations of complex things). Remember, life is complex.
You can’t reduce life to simple platitudes.
If you don’t believe me, read the New Testament. It’s trippy.
The dragon must be overcome.
And since you’re the main character, only you can do it.
Others will help you.
Others will inspire you.
Like Harry Potter, you must plot the downfall of the dragon: just like he does in the relevant novel.
You must fight.
Through art, through building, through logic, through truth.
You must run at the thing you are most passionate about.
But who will be your guide?
Articles like this.
Books.
Novels.
Self-help.
The Bible.
God.
Your friends and family (so long as they’re helpful).
You must fight, fight, fight.
So hard.
Harder than you’ve ever fought.
I can offer my help, however small.
Because I write novels.
And I have this little thing I like to call ‘The Gelato Club.’
It’s my email list.
I write stuff like this and send it to your inbox.
And I let you know about the books I’m writing.
So and and so forth.
It’s my angle.
We’ve all got an angle, yes?
Also, cool things like SEO and MARKETING.
If you know SEO, you can rule the world.
Hopefully for the good and not the bad.
It’s magic, like the witches and wizards in the story.
With some SEO, you can write content for what it is your passionate about — be it books or film or fashion or religion or what have you — and appear in the top results for your writing and you get readers and people to come to you.
This is a powerful thing.
It must be used for the good.
Even if you use a little bit of trickery.
I’m listening to Post-y right now.
I always appreciated him, because even when the Jonas Brothers weren’t ‘cool,’ he still liked them and name dropped them in Better Now.
He’s a real one.
He’s also self-made.
He put out his first music video on Youtube and it went viral.
That’s how he got started.
I don’t even think he had a label.
Or something like that…
Life isn’t always going to come to us.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes, we have to ‘go after it with a club,’ — the words of Jack London, the writer.
In that context, he was talking about ‘inspiration.’
Go after it.
Lastly.
If you don’t pursue your calling that God has for you, you’ll lose everything.
Everything depends on it.
And it’s never too late.
IMAGINE.
How your life would be if you went after your passion?
If you wrote that novel you’ve always wanted to write.
If you started that business.
If you started that podcast or blog.
You would transform.
Because although there are some tricks that work in small ways.
There are no shortcuts.
In the pursuit of your calling, just like Post Malone, you may transform into someone transformed.
Like Harry Potter.
This is the hero’s journey.
This is yours.
And.
Now that I’ve taken you here and you’ve reached the end of this article I think it only fair for me to end with this:
Buy my novels 😉
PS – On my second vacation to Hawaii, I listened to Post Malone the entire trip, as I walked around and walked down the beach and lay on the beach.
The memories, for me, are perfect.
Post Malone means a lot to me.
That’s an impact only a person who had dedicated themselves to craft can achieve.
And it’s well worth it, yes?
That’s what we’re all here for.
That’s why it all matters.
We’re helpings ourselves and others and ourselves and others and ourselves and others.
Harry Potter has friends after all…
And now, maybe we are friends.
Good to meet you, even if we met under tricky circumstances.
I’m AJ.
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