My book has now officially been published and for sale a little bit over a month now. I have sold about 70 physical copies of the 300 copies that I bought to sell so far. I am making progress. I have about 7 weeks until I go on tour on June 14th. It's coming up pretty soon, and I have a lot of stuff to work on in order to make sure that I am ready for it!! This includes marketing my book and trying to get people interested in the book and the tour and lots and lots of marketing.
This past weekend I went to Seattle to see the Youtube star and Singer/Songwriter Tiffany Alvord in concert. The concert was amazingly great and I had a blast listening and chilling out with her for a couple hours due to the fact that I bought backstage passes to the show. I gave her a copy of the book because she is mentioned a few times in it and we got to talk a bit about like hugs and how awesome and amazing hugs are. That night I received 30 hugs and Tiffany received about 300 hugs. Afterwards we had a discussion about the amount of hugs we each receive and who gives away more hugs, you know, a little friendly competition. I also mentioned that my goal for Free Hugs Tour 2013 was to give away 100,000 hugs in 90 days.
The next day, April 20, 2013, I tried to give away some free hugs around Seattle but I really wasn't feeling the hugging mood (the confidence and dedication to stick to giving away hugs without being able to take rejections personally). When this happens, as described in my book, free hugging doesn't have as many of the benefits so it is better to stop giving away hugs because that is when it is more likely to have negative effects. I was then thinking about the goal to get 100,000 hugs, and with that goal, there is a lot more emphasis on the process of getting and receiving the hugs and less emphasis on the meaning behind the hug as well as the message behind the Free Hugs Lifestyle. The meaning and experiences of each hug are lost in a way. Another problem that I thought about with trying to compete with giving away a certain number of hugs is the tendency to try and push people that don't want to get hugs into getting hugs and potentially providing a bad experience for them rather than a positive one. That is not to say that having a hugging goal number, but just making sure that I remember the more important parts of the hugging experience than just focusing on giving hugs in order to reach that hugging number goal.
Just some food for thought that I was thinking about recently. Let me know what yall think about that. Have a fantastic day.
Hugs,
David Melia (Professional Free Hugger)
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