Bruno Deshayes Copywriting Blog

What does the wife of a public relation expert say when she cannot sleep at night? "Tell me again darling, just what is it that you do for a living?"

Of course Michael Jackson is alive... I just heard him sing on the radio..

I have been consolidating all my debts. Now each month I just have one bill I cannot pay.

Hey I will be a father in August. I just don't know how to tell my wife.

A PR consultant wants to impress his first client coming to his office by saying on the phone to someone else: "We are so successful I just won't be able to start on your campaign straight away..." then he turns to a young man who walked in the office and asks "What can I do for you?" the young man says "Nothing I'm just here to hook-up your phone!"

Fat? He is so fat when he travels by train he has to buy two tickets.

Fat? He is so fat he bought himself a car with the steering wheel in the middle of the dashboard.

My wife likes fiction rather than non-fiction. So I never tell her the truth.

I really have to acknowledge this about my wife: whenever she's right, she's the first one to admit it.

A tree surgeon recently opened a branch in our neighborhood. The local paper says: "... injured himself critically after falling out of one of his patients."

I was an only child - I learned to play hide and seek with myself.

I'm a free spirit. I have no hang-ups whatsoever!
This explains why my clothes are always on the floor.

Ugly? She's so ugly her licence mentions she can only drive at night.

I was so drunk I fell asleep precisely when my head hit the accelerator.

My wife sometimes runs a garage sale so we can meet with people of similar appalling taste.

Passionate? You can tell how passionate she feels by how she digs her fingernails into my wallet.

The tax system is odd. You pay tax in 2010 on money you earned in 2009... and spent in 2008.

Another thoughtful and inspiring mother's day gift: the ride-on vacuum cleaner.

Poverty: I started out with nothing and I've got most of it left.

Blessed are those who aim for nothing for they shall not be disappointed.

Being caught in traffic: entering a roundabout only to find out all exits have a wrong way sign.

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Poatina, 70km from Launceston, Tasmania was built in the 1960's to house the labour force building the hydro electric scheme of the Great Lake. With the advent of automation the hydro power station is now monitored remotely from Hobart and only a skeleton staff remains on site. The Fusion Christian organisation was able to buy the whole village complete with a general store, a motel, a service station, primary and secondary schools, an oval, a golf course, a swimming pool and a community hall.

Poatina is the hub of Fusion with regular seminars, a radio station, TAFE accredited social work courses and an office overseeing missions overseas.

Poatina is run as a strata title rather than being an open real-estate market. Bar a few, all the people here are involved with Fusion. The organisation had a major setback in 2009 when its charismatic leader Mal Garvin fell from grace in a case of sexual indiscretion with a young woman he was ministering to. He admitted his guilt and resigned. Three years on, the organisation changed its structure with a CEO and a board of directors. Poatina is searching for a new identity. Some key people left either to the overseas mission field or out of a sense of betrayal.

There are 2 new buildings in the town. A new library for the school and an aircraft hangar acquired and erected to house a new tourist attraction: a glass blowing studio.

There is no courthouse, no lawyer, no constable, no pub, no liquor outlet, no drugs. The only offenders are the large possums who turn you garbage bin upside down during the night and pooh everywhere on the lawns. A fly invades your house the moment you leave your door ajar but they don't bother you when you are outside. The weather can change in an instant. You may head off with T-shirt and thongs and a sun hat and return drenched and shivering after a howling wind dumps a surprise shower.

I arrived in early January 2012 as a volunteer and helped as a kitchen hand during the 'Faith And The Arts Festival'. Even the simplest things require you to use your brains as I found out when my task was to peel the shell of some 100 hard boiled eggs. After 20 eggs the skin of my left thumb was red and sore. I developed a technique to roll the egg on the table bench to make many small cracks along the middle and then peeling the egg under water like an orange.

My task is to come up with ways to put the Poatina Chalet Motel and Restaurant back on the tourist map. I took photos of all the rooms and cabins and uploaded them onto a booking website

This week I served fuel at the service station which doubles as a bank since it is the only place in town with an ATM. There again I was on my own fumbling on how to replace the roll of paper so that we could continue issuing receipts. There is no longer a mechanic on duty. But he suddenly appeared back from Canberra with his wife who teaches at the next conference. He was quick to reopen the work bay and hoisted on the lift a 'Thomas Tank Engine' with a petrol engine. It was to be maintained for the Australia Day parade and is featured on the Google Maps Street View.

I hardly have time to scratch myself but I managed to do some sightseeing last Saturday and visit a church in Launceston on Sunday.

The dining room looks more like a canteen than a restaurant and passing tourists would be forgiven to think they landed in the midst of some grand church retreat. The people you meet are affable and easy to talk to. Most of them are from an open brethren, church of Christ, evangelical background but I also found an ex Christian Outreach Centre pastor from Western Australia.

Well, time to sign off now as I am heading for the Foundation Course - the one week long intensive Fusion discipleship program.

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Being alone is not something to run away from. In fact there is much healing in listening to the sound of your own silence.

Just like each relationship started one day each relationship will also end one day. It is a fact of life. Welcome to the real world. The issue is that as we seek out and foster new relationships some of our current ones may come to an abrupt end for no fault of our own. Obviously separation and divorce come blaring loud in our mind but may I suggest that each one of us will be called to widowhood. So what can we learn from our seniors in that matter?

Bad love is better than no love at all? I beg to differ. Leaning onto someone else instead of standing firm on your own two feet is called being co-dependant. It is the fastest way to ruin a relationship. You tend to attract people like yourself. So if you are out of balance you will seek solace with people who are also off kilter and the vicious cycle of misery repeats itself.

Have you even considered that God Himself might be the one to pull the plug on your merry-go-round in order to get your attention and get you to address issues swept under the carpet all this time? God is in the character building business and He doesn't mind breaking a few eggs to make an omelette. There is a day of reckoning for each one of us. In order to be fit for eternity we have to undergo a refining process. Discipline is never pleasant at the time but in the end it produces the fruit that we can boast about. If you are currently undergoing a time of loneliness - don't fight it - embrace it. Learn how to make peace with yourself. Learn how to talk to yourself and forgive yourself. {Learn to improve the quality of your self-talk.} People who talk to themselves are not cuckoo. They are the ones who can shut down the onslaught of nonsense coming out of the TV to take the time to have a good one on one talk in the mirror.

Instead of running around aimlessly to bolster your self-esteem why don't you start at home? What you think about yourself will determine your future. You can rip out the batteries from your clock but time will still tick along. In fact there will be a day of reckoning where we will each individually have to give an account of what we've done with that precious amount of time we have been given on earth.

There are three slices of our time: the past, the present and the future. The past is closed. You may have good memories of the good old days but you can't live in them. Photos and videos may still bear witness of things gone by but unless you are an historian you don't want to dwell there. Be thankful of what you enjoyed but have the courage to say goodbye.

The future has a way of catching up on us. Ever wondered if you could freeze time and stop those bills from arriving in the mail? In fact people say: "Have you noticed how time flies on us?" What you are doing today is a direct result of what you did yesterday and last week and the month before and last year. It's all coming to fruition - today!

So our lives are so ordained that today is where you should make things count. That's the perfect antidote to loneliness. Find something good to do today and you won't feel lonely! Find out what you are good at and do it with all your might. Then you will have friends who will appreciate you for who you are and what you stand for - not for what they can get out of you.

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Divorce, unemployment and homelessness have the effect of causing you to lose your bearings because your familiar environment is no longer there.

Your self-esteem, your self-worth and your self-image are all rooted in what you have achieved in your environment. I was once cruising along nicely when my marriage blew-up in my face after a drawn-out period of unemployment exposed some cracks in the relationship.

As men we see ourselves as providers for our family. You may trust someone with whom you spent 20 years of your life raising the same children only to find out that the love and commitment have grown cold and the rats are leaving the sinking ship.

For a man silence means tacit agreement but when a woman dishes out the silence treatment to her husband it means protracted resistance. That's why it is important to talk things over in a marriage because there might be two opposite mindsets about the same situation.

How do you draw the line in a home business that's going nowhere fast? How do you sell your skills when your own venture is failing? Who wants to hire a loser? In frustration and desperation you go back into your cave and hope to come up with a better gizmo, the killer gizmo that's going to make all this suffering worth the pain after all. What if that does not happen?

What if in this drawn-out struggle you also lose your accommodation? Have you known what it is like to move from place to place but not belonging anywhere? Have you slept in your car and shaved in the parenting restroom of a fast food restaurant? Have you kept in touch with your email lugging your laptop to recharge in a public library?

Have you lost the esteem of friends who don't know if they want to help you anymore because your situation is so protracted? Have you stared in dismay at all your belongings stacked up in a storage facility - not knowing whether you should sell it all or hang-on for a breakthrough?

I have gone through all that and since I do not have anybody to talk to I thought I'll give you the benefit of the experience by writing it down...

Some people advise me I should keep quiet about my circumstances because it will put off prospective employers. I reckon when the time comes I can sell my story and talk about my boot camp experience and how it made me a better person.

Don't have pity on me - your time will come too. I don't wish this on anybody but the fact of the matter is that we are descending into some troubled times ahead. Be prepared. In fact I don't know if you can ever prepare for this. You just have to handle it one day at a time.

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People who are in a relationship for themselves find that they are not getting a good deal while those who seek to meet the needs of their partner find out that we are wired quite differently.

For a man the main currency is respect. How can you establish your leadership in the home if your authority is under-valued by no other than the one who should be the president of your fan-club?

For a woman the main currency is love. Not sexual intercourse but a steady stream of non-verbal clues that he cares for you and your well-being is always on his mind. How depressing can it be when he says: "I told you at your birthday that I love you! Why do you need to hear it again constantly?"

"Vive la difference!" God in His infinite wisdom made us complimentary - not similar. So how can you leverage the untapped potential of your marriage? For some unfortunately I should rephrase it as: "How can you pre-empt the next clash and rebuild a better foundation?"

Doing life together is an adventure, a risk, a challenge, a step into the unknown. There are things in life that you will never learn at school, things that your mother never told you about, things that you will have to workout for yourselves.

The one and only question that really matters is this: "Are you committed to make this marriage work?" "Are you in it for the long-haul?" "Are you committed to your mate through hail, rain or shine?"

Unless you are fully committed to each other you have no-where to go together. Once you realise it is more blessed to give than to receive you will learn to trust that your goodwill will not go in vain.

Being just flatmates in the same accommodation is no way to run a marriage. You have to be sold-out on a common goal for the marriage to stick. You can bet your resolve will be tested indeed. You might see a happy couple at a social function but you may not want to swap places because precious little did you know about the ordeal they might have gone through together...

As iron sharpens iron a married couple have to grow-up together. Your whole life together is not meant to be a static experience but an obstacle course where each step makes you more understanding, and may I say more loving and more respectful of each other.

The bottom line is this: If you value somebody so much that you have made the commitment to share your lives together then it stands to reason that you would refrain from doing the things that person dislikes and endeavour to figure out how to do perfectly the things that person enjoys from you.

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