Face Down in Iceplant

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

To pluck a petal from the bloom of  friend and  recondite commenter, Don Reedy, I’ve been ‘face down in a slope of iceplant’  for 30 days. Yes, iceplant.  (I’ll let the man himself expound a little later but allow me to tempt you with the essence of his yarn—- it involves a houseboat in San Diego, a Belushi Halloween costume (including handcuffed briefcase), and a lost weekend somewhere in the bowels of the 1980s. Un huh.)

You see, I too have been on a pastoral  quest  of sorts this month and  presently find myself scurrying through the  Bloodhound shadows to slip this flimsy piece under the Big Dog’s door before the triple witching hour tonight—June’s last breath.  I take a peek around the literary pound and am relieved to  find that my WordPress password is still active and that my name and mugshot are still posted on the BHB sidebar.  Only a handful of  hours remains between me and blanking an entire month on the hallowed front post page. Hopefully I’ll push Publish before the final strike of Midnight and keep the holy streak alive.  Admittedly, I’ve been remiss in my self-imposed dogmatic duties.

So this is what has gone down since I last posted Mother Nature is not a MILF on May 30th (an essay written mostly on my iPhone that netted a total of 6 unique comments including a few of my own trite responses). I pooled my talents, sunk my literary savings into a mental Ponzie marketing scheme, and found myself  nearly wiped clean from the blogarian grid as I danced 30 days straight ‘with the one who brung me’ to this economic station in life to begin with—real estate sales.  Eleven of them to be exact.  I’ve never done eleven of anything in a single month much less an activity involving commission checks with accompanying deposit slips.  And now, after eleven hard money contracts written and/or Closed in June, I come crawling back to my digital workspace on knees and elbows on this last day of the month, famished and thirsty for Google juice; mind, gut, and Adword account all but drained. On figurative creative fumes. A quip or two every few days on Facebook (again, via my iPhone) has been my only contact with the electronic media. I forgot to pay my Comcast bill. Twice.  When I finally booted up my laptop at home to begin this piece last Sunday, the bastards had already unhooked my shit. Some nice gentleman from a war torn Third World nation assisted me with the re-connect. I think he said his name was Billy Bob.  Billy Bob Pakhtoon.

I posted my first blog in December of 2005  because my lead generation efforts had basically dissolved into sediment.  Momentum alone carried me through 2006. It was only after reading a Time Magazine article later that year that I decided to change my real estate physiognomy and commit to a low carb regiment of  dietary backlink fiber.  For the next several months I was more concerned with the BMI on my Page Rank scale than the actual dirty act of  soliciting….ahem…. property.  And as my writing skills appeared to flourish, my sales skills began to atrophy.  I showed up at my accountant’s office in 2008 with my 1099s in hand and his secretary asked for ID. I was fiscally unrecognizable. I had become the Joaquin Phoenix of  his client base. I told her she should check out my blog, that I was now a writer and a Realtor. I believe her response was, “Whatever. Cash or credit card only, Mr. Petro.”  Whatever…

So, as Mr Reedy so beautifully explains it in the comment section of a previous post, “A friend found me two days later, face down in a slope of iceplant (I’ll bring a sample, because iceplant only grows where it doesn’t freeze). It took another two days for my face to lose the iceplant imprint…”

And there, too, is where I only recently found the other half of my creative soul.  In Iceplant. Face Down. On a Slope.  Imprinted.   I’ve said it many times before on this venue; I can either write or I can sell.  I just can’t seem to do both at the same time worth a darn. So for the next 30 days or so I suppose I’ll write.  I’m in a  Francis Ford Coppola Zoetrope Screenplay Contest with an August 1 deadline. Now that’s as good an excuse as any for not selling jack squat in July.

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