Have you noticed lately that more and more people are not replying to your emails? I have. I don’t think it’s personal. I’m not talking about the email people ignore that is obviously spam. But an email to someone you know. It could be a business colleague or client, or a prospect that you have been in correspondence with.

Laura told me she had recently attended a seminar at the aquarium about the evolution of salmon, which are among the most adaptive of fish. They swim many miles upstream to spawn and then die, while the juveniles swim back out to sea to begin the cycle again. Only the most hardy survive, as they adapt to the challenging journey. Her instructor had included a reference to Charles Darwin, who famously postulated that the animal species must adapt, migrate or die, just as the salmon do. Adapt, migrate or die has become her mantra for the future.

It is a rule of media training that despite the questions a reporter asks, you return or “bridge” back to your original point. Like a broken record, you repeat your message over and over again as a fact that can’t be disputed. If you stay “on message,” as they say in politics, eventually your point of view becomes embedded in the minds of your target audiences, moving them to your side of the argument (hopefully). Judge Sonia Sotomayor has learned this lesson well.

Because I’ve been taking a blogging course, my peers have come to view me with awe. I have become their go-to person when I barely have mastered the rudiments myself. I am both flattered and embarrassed because I am no tech expert – trust me on that one.

But you don’t need to be a techie to enter the new world of social media. And if you are working fulltime or part-time or are what I term “working retired,” then you need to be in the game.

I attended the wedding of a dear friend last Sunday on the beach in a state park in New Haven. The reception was held in the other half of a building that housed an old-fashioned carousel. From time to time, the small children would be given rides. Then, at the end of the reception, as a sort of punctuation mark, the bridge and groom climbed on board and waved to us grown-ups to follow.

How many times have we heard the old axiom, “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” Well, that may be true sometimes. But I think you make your own luck when it comes to presenting yourself.

I hate the term “elevator speech.” That’s the little story about yourself that you tell someone you have trapped in an elevator. It’s supposed to be your introduction that gets them to do something wonderful for you.

I was in the audience of a meeting of a professional association not too long ago when a woman got up and expressed her dismay at having to compete with younger women in this terrible job market. She was in her 40s.