Schreiner’s Media Landscape

This is probably the longest time between posts since I started Landscape in 2005. Simply put: I’ve been busy. And that’s good. One of the reasons I began blogging five years ago was because I wasn’t busy. I’d just created Schreiner Productions in Champaign, Illinois and things were slow after two years. Champaign turned out to be too small and too conservative for my vision. The blog kept my writing, reading and thinking skills honed but, more than anything, it drew attention to my struggling entrepreneurial venture. Looking at where I am today, I’d have to say it worked. Salt Lake City turned out to be even better for my business than I thought it would be. Change was very good.

It’s proof that change is good but not necessarily in and of itself. It depends on how people receive and react to it. The fact that my childhood sports heroes the Chicago Blackhawks just won the Stanley Cup for the first time since I was seven is a major change. They can no longer be called the “Ice Cubs” at least for a couple of seasons. While this relieves pressure on the Hawks to live up to their formerly desperate fans’ high expectations, this major development creates a new problem- for the Chicago Cubs, the city’s only sports team who hasn’t won anything in more than 100 years and one that has clearly not handled change well. The local sports news spotlight will soon shift to them with even more pressure and higher expectations. The results may be good. But I’m inclined to agree with comedian Lewis Black’s assessment when he told a cheering audience as he took the stage, “You people have obviously come here with some sort of expectation and I don’t respond well to pressure.”

Similarly, BP is not responding well to the change its recklessness and arrogance created in what can now be called the Gulf of Mexico Open Air Refinery. Every day the pressure mounts for them to do something they either have no intention of doing or are utterly incapable of doing. My belief is they will declare bankruptcy under the mountain of lawsuits that grows every day they do nothing and leave American taxpayers holding the bill again. Why the Tea Party movement, and the Republican Party who also doesn’t handle change very well, support the concept of corporate piracy behind unbridled capitalism eludes me. But then again, the Republican/Tea Party has successfully eluded common sense themselves.

What it all means is change is not all good nor all bad. It is unavoidable, unpredictable and often irreversible. The challenge is how we handle the changes: the things in and out of our control and somewhere on the border between the two. This thin line accurately represents the tenuousness of life itself and constantly challenges us to deal with it or simply give up and spend the rest of our days nailed to the couch watching “Two and a Half Men”. TV, laughter, love, sex, drugs, music, alcohol, video games and other ointments merely soothe our symptoms of confusion, fear and despair. Ultimately, we must face our continuously evolving realities: recognize, learn, adjust, and change ourselves- or die.