Obligatory Thanksgiving Post

It's yet another holiday message from someone not coming to dinner at your house!

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I know Thanksgiving is tomorrow (for all my American readers out there), but you’re going to be busy doing better things than reading an email from me, so I thought I’d do this a day early.

It’s funny how, when you run any kind of business that communicates frequently with customers, or an audience, you feel an obligation to send heartfelt holiday messages to them, as though you have to maintain a personal relationship with folks who are spending time with their real-life loved ones. I can never decide if it’s too try-hard or not to send out those messages, but I end up doing it anyway, because it’s The Thing To Do.

One year, a few years back, my wife wanted a Thanksgiving video to send to her real estate clients, so I edited this thing together from a bunch of stock footage and did a voiceover for it. I wound up with something nice, but generic, like if the Hallmark Channel wanted to send you holiday greetings:

But because I found the script unbearably dull — yes, the script I wrote — and I was working on multiple takes with the voiceover, I decided to try something funny and just narrate the video’s imagery as I saw it. Just improv, the whole way through. It wound up being the WAY better version of the video, even if it’s not the one we sent to clients:

Life is full of funny little games we play to maintain appearances. And for some reason, I can never seem to stop breaking the fourth wall.

So today, while I’d like to post something poignant or captivating, I’ll just be straight with you: