Shitstorm!

That was what ContentWise editor Wendi Nichols and I said we were going to call our special May issue. We settled on "Post-Meltdown Communication." We and our sources tell how to talk to all constituencies about the new economic reality and your organization's place in it … how to communicate layoffs … how one company started a blog to engage its fiercest critics … and how to position your brand so it's ahead when the the smoke clears. Click here to download a free issue.

Boy, thanks to Facebook, a fellow can't ignore his birthday even if he wants to. (Well thanks, ever'body.)

Today's my 40th, and I think I know why people go a little bonkers on their 40th and not their 30th.

At the 30th, you're still measuring your life based on how you hoped or conceived it might be back when you were becoming an adult, in your late teens and early 20s. So even if you're not measuring up to your youthful notions of yourself at 30, at least you have some relationship with them.

(At 30, I was happy I was writing but sad that all my work was confined to the corporate communication "ghetto" as I called it. I loved this business but I wanted to write about things other than intranets once in a while. I managed to pull that off, writing all sorts of stuff for newspapers and magazines throughout my 30s.)

But at 40, you're past the sound barrier, beyond the gravitational pull, outrunning your headlights. What the 20-year-old you thinks of you now is immaterial, because the 20-year-old didn't think this far ahead.

That's where I'm at: Right where my dad always said I'd be, always said he was: all grown up and still feeling like a little kid, sometimes with nothing to do on a rainy day, sometimes anxious about bringing my report card home, usually scared of the big kids, often confused about what to do and, still, usually glad to wake up in the morning and see what will happen next.

I hate everybody,
And everybody hates me.
That's the way it is,
And that's the way
I like it to be.
—Pat Gillespie, Cleveland, Ohio