SCBWI Writing Prompts

Connection: The Ultimate Challenge

Last installment of SCBWI writing prompts challenge.

I am introvert, but I love people. Go figure.

I have been a ham since I was little. I crave attention, and I get along with people. However, I am not very good at hanging out in social events.

After all, I am an introvert. I like to be alone. Solitude is where I am at home.

Can you why I call myself Mister Weirdo?

By the way, let’s be clear about this. It’s Mister Weirdo, not Mr. Weirdo. Got it?

But I love people, and I am in people pleasing business. Always have been.

I worked in the restaurant industry as a waiter and a manager, mostly. Both jobs require connecting with people. I can do that.

When you love people, you are naturally interested in what they want. As a waiter, or a restaurant manager, my job was to find out what people wanted and assure that I do my best to satisfy those needs.

As a Public Speaking professional, I have to establish a connection with my audience. It is a different kind of connection, and you don’t get the one-on-one rapport with them to identify their needs. I have to rely on my intuition to read an audience and this where being an introvert comes in handy.

We are all connected energetically and spiritually. When you can tap into your intuition, then you can reach out and feel the energy and thoughts of the audience.

As a balloon artist, it’s an altogether different ballgame. You have to make two different sets of connections. The child who is the end user, and the parent who is the customer/client. You have to satisfy both of them. Some times you have to play a mediator between the two.

The child may want something simple and familiar, but the parent’s inner child may want to see something new and more elaborate.

After 40 years of being in people pleasing business including a dozen years twisting balloons, I have learned to use my intuition to feel the energy and let it guide me to come up with a solution that will satisfy both of them.

I did it! I finished the 31-day challenge to write something based on a prompt provided by the SCBWI that Amy Marley introduced me to a month ago. It was a challenge for the Month of May, but since I started on the 8th of May, I did the first seven retroactively, and today is the final installment. Yay!

Amy has a collection of all the creations from various friends who took part in the challenge. You can read them here.

As always, thank you for reading and responding.

More about me:

Rasheed Hooda is a published author and a regular contributor to ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium where writers support each other.

He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)

“You can let others tell you what it means to be successful, or you can decide it for yourself.”