I used to think that successful people had it all figured out. If they wanted to make something happen, they knew exactly what to do. If they created a new product, it would be instantly popular and profitable. They knew all the right people, hired the right help, set all the right prices, and pulled all the right strings of the many moving parts of their business to make it all work perfectly. Had they attained some kind of career Nirvana ,

We live a lonely life out here on the internet. Sure, we've got email and blogs and social media and Skype and the occasional contact via an actual phone, but in real-life terms we're pretty isolated. We usually live far away from our "work friends." We swap ideas in small, discreet blocks " a half-hour IM chat with someone here, an email or two with someone else there. Sometimes,

I like to use these Weekly Wrap intros to feature interesting industry news and tidbits, not to talk about myself and the cool things I've been up to. Note: All previous intros that violate this principle have been random coincidences resulting in accidental self-aggrandizement. Anyway, re: developments in blogging and social media,

A lot happened over the summer while the Wrap was on hiatus. One of those things was relevant to this here world of marketing and networking and connection and bon-bons' and that was the launch of the Google+ social network. But I'm just going to come right out and say it: Although the internet at large soiled itself with excitement when Google+ was launched, I checked in, said "Meh," and went back to Twitter. I mean, I knew people on Twitter.

I think there comes a time in every person's life when he has to ask himself, "Am I most effectively doing what Copyblogger tells me to do, to the point of abdicating my free will and possibly granting its editors power of attorney?" So this week, I took inventory and decided that I wasn't spreading my words widely enough. To remedy the situation, I finally put some stuff up on Kindle as several people keep telling me I should do " my 2008 humor collection,

It felt like the walls were closing in, the room growing smaller. My heart was hammering hard enough that I could see my pulse against the back of my eyes. I was having trouble breathing, an automatic function that was suddenly requiring conscious thought. Sounds were too loud. Lights were too bright. The lab's normal smell of yeast " food for the stock of fruit flies " had grown pungent, vaguely offensive. The people around me felt sinister, I avoided them.

So today will be the last Wrap until summer ends, the kids go back to school, and Brian puts his shirt back on. So in honor of this being our season finale, I'm throwing the BIGGEST, BADDEST, ROOTIN'-TOOTIN'EST PARTY YOU'VE EVER SEEN IN A BLOG POST! Of course, because we're confined to a blog post without multimedia, the party won't actually feature any alcohol or dancing. Or refreshments. Or music. Or, actually, any social interaction other than in the comments.

My name is Johnny B. Truant. You might know me from stimulating enterprises such as The Badass Project or my own infamous blog , or maybe even the Copyblogger Weekly Wrap . What you might not know is that I'm a woman. This is not a joke or an angle or an analogy " I'm literally a woman. This is my story. Once upon a time, I found myself having to make some hard decisions. Decisions like whether to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,

I was talking to a concerned client recently. After taking my advice, his traffic and blog comments had started to decrease. We'd had three or four sessions, and he'd diligently done all I suggested, and he was implementing and enjoying himself and excited about his business. But that graph kept trending downward. And it was starting to get to him. Honestly, I could see where he was coming from. You hire a coach, and he tells you what to do, and your numbers go down ?

Back in early 2009, Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz announced that she'd taken on a guinea pig. And, because it was Naomi's guinea pig, it had a fair amount of attitude and tended to swear a lot. This guinea pig explained its presence in the IttyBiz big picture by telling a story about what online marketing looked like from the average customer's perspective: For those of you who haven't checked it out,

I don't understand air travel in the least. I mean, I'm on a plane as I'm writing this, and really, the physics of the whole thing are astounding when you stop to think about it. The Wright brothers get all the credit for inventing flight, but they did the easy part. Get many tons of metal into the air, defy gravity, yada yada. Whatever. But who figured out you could get ten passengers to fit into three square feet of space?

I'm going to keep this week's intro brief because my dog is biting me. My mother says he bites us all because he's herding us )he's a collie mix and barks and corrals when anyone runs(, but I think it's because he wants to be on the winning side. If anyone is play-attacking anyone else, he bites the person being attacked. He's kind of an ass that way. So it really can't bode well that I'm being harassed while writing the Wrap.

I've never appreciated classic literature. I read Hawthorne and I get bored. I read Austen and I fall asleep. My wife likes Dickens, but I can't stand it. Ask me who Tiny Tim is, and nine times out of ten I'll refer you to the obsessive-compulsive ukulele player from the 60s. Literature snobs think I'm low-brow, and that my modern reading material is hollow. I disagree. A good story is a good story. Any good story can move you ' but before it can do that,

Those who stalk me )and you know who you are( know that I've been talking a lot lately about " Storyselling ," which is a way to sell stuff using stories. But nothing is infallible, so I wanted to publicly announce some flaws I've found with it: Don't use Storyselling with the police. Tell them about Uncle Phil's hairpiece and they'll still put you in jail for running over a Photomat booth with a city bus. )Don't ask how I know this.

This week, I finalized my plans to go to join the Blogworld hullaballoo in Las Vegas, which is where I'll be winning my fortune at the blackjack tables, or possibly losing my house, or possibly not even playing blackjack at all. Blackjack is the game where you hit the ball on the rope until you wrap it around the pole, right? Now, I try to be understanding,

Nope, I didn't get fired. I'm back in the saddle around here, ready to summarize things for you and put them into an easily digestible, bullet point form. So why the layoff on the weekly wraps )now twice as delish with half the calories(? Well, it was summer. Brian and Sonia wanted a break from removing libelous statements from my scribblings, and I wanted time to pursue my hobby of reworking large companies' marketing slogans. For example: BP: Well,

Fresh out of college, I landed a job writing one-page sell sheets for a marketing company for $50 each. On an rare excellent day, I might do as many as two of these. Soon after, I found a freelance gig that would pay me $300 per article I wrote for an inter-organizational newsletter. I got to interview people for that one. It was more work, but better money. Eventually, I hooked up with a pretty big industry magazine and was being paid $1300 for 2000-word feature articles.