As you might already know, I do these monthly speedlinks that I call the What’s Up Wednesdays series. For the September collection, we’ve got bloggers dropping some mad wisdom. Or something.

Life is hard. It’s full of struggles and challenges and hardships. How can you keep going? Borrow a page from Art Eddy and derive some inspiration from Homer Simpson. Remember that episode where he had a sign on his workstation that read “Don’t forget: You’re here forever” and he altered it to read “Do it for her” with photos of Maggie?

In one of the better posts I’ve read in some time, Sam Chan offers his response to a racist letter that’s been making its way around local social media. An anonymous letter was dropped off calling out “all other Asian realtors in our cities” and our “singularly ugly race” is “not welcome or wanted in our neighborhood.” We could lash back in anger, but Sam takes a much more measured approach.

Raising a kid is hard enough. It’s even harder when you’re faced with special challenges. A recent post on Dad Enough discusses an incident he experienced after a baseball game with his son who has autism. We have to remember that “non-verbal does not mean mute.” His little “Monster” finally asked for what he wanted… except they couldn’t give it to him at that moment.

I was chubby as a kid. My brother made fun of me all the time. Then, I hit puberty and that weight stretched out over more height. These days, as I get older, I’m rocking an increasingly pronounced dad bod (though I prefer the term “father figure”), of which I am not especially proud. David Stanley points out that boys and men face all kinds of body image issues too and we just have to learn to accept that this is the only body you’re going to get.

My relationship with Google has been complicated at the best of times. While I certainly write these posts with the reader in mind, I can’t ignore the power of search engines either. This is especially true with my more professional exploits. To that end, Kristopher Jones offers some keen wisdom into understanding search intent and how you can leverage that information for better search rankings.

Well, there’s Jamie Schmidt going against the grain again. “Screen time” is oftentimes vilified by pediatric experts, making me feel like a bad dad for indulging my daughter in another episode PAW Patrol. Jamie disagrees, saying that children don’t watch enough TV. Of course, his actual message is a little more nuanced than that.

And finally, we finish this month’s collection with a little writing wisdom from Kyle Massa. If you want your writing to be cohesive, meaningful, and compelling, it pays to start with an outline. We learned that in elementary school. But what if that’s not for you? Kyle offers an alternative to outlining that he calls the Junk Doc. Do you think that’d work for you?