Let's Try Again

Looking back over the last 16 or so posts, I realize this has rambled back and forth between stagnancy and proliferation, with no real common line of subjects. I have deleted about half of those, and saved the rest, with the hope of a fresh start in this space. I am going to start this up again to provide myself a place to chronicle my thoughts. Partly because i find myself constantly reading and finding information that I want to retain, but short of taking notes, have no way to organize it all, this will be that place. Also, reading over the posts I did not delete, I am upset I did not keep it up back then. It was worthwhile to read the short ones I have left, if I had done full write-ups on those trips, they would have been absolutely priceless. This is pretty much going to be the place I keep my internal life organized, and a place where I can look back and chart my progress. Towards what I am progressing, I don’t rightly know. I know that I am, and always will be, on the path though. I will let this flow where it will, in the meantime developing my voice, my own processes. I have learned a lot and matured a lot these past few months, but I don’t want to lose those lessons. I know now how easy it is to forget past lessons while caught up in life’s current successes. Let this also stand as my way of reining myself in, constantly reminding myself that the journey is never over, and to never be satisfied with what I have accomplished (more on all that later though).

Lately I have read a lot about how, with the information and content driven business model cropping up everywhere today, where added value is the buzzword, people are beginning to manage themselves as a brand. In the past, that was a much more ethereal concept. Your personal brand was how people thought of you, the network you build, the connections you make in your day to day life. Now, with the proliferation of Web 2.0 and social networking, personal branding has taken on a whole new level of involvement. Through the multitude of options (Twittr, Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, et al) each person has the ability to present themselves exactly how they wish, and to network with anyone the world over in the process. Never before was such unfettered access to the haves given to the have nots. For example, through Twittr and blogs, anyone can now interact with Senior level members of Fortune 500 companies. This space, then, is also to serve as my way of keeping all of that together. It will help me keep my online life organized and easy to track. Also, now your resume is not the only thing representing you to prospective employers. I have already seen job postings that specifically ask you to not submit a resume. Rather, they want to see what is in your RSS reader, what you write in your blog, the content you contribute and are capable of creating.

The main purpose of this is internal for me, in that I will use it to track where I have been and what I was thinking. If people enjoy what I write here and share it with others, or want to use it to keep in touch with me, that is wonderful. On the flip side, if everyone who comes across this thinks it is ridiculous and no one ever reads it, I will be just as happy. I make this public as an extra motivation to stay involved with it.