The other day I received an e-mail notification that my domain name for this blog is up for renewal. This triggered me to go back and review my blog postings and perform a quick personal inventory. While I was reading over each of my previous posts, it reminded me why I began blogging and what my short and long term goals were. Being completely honest, I had no idea what I was getting myself into and what the future had in store. Here is a short list of phases and their descriptions I encountered along the way:
- Establish the basics and define the overall navigation around WordPress and find ways to define core values, identity and overall content.
- Create an identity for the blogsphere to answer the following question: “Who is Geoff Snyder?“
- Learn about theme layouts, plugins, basic SEO, linking, and VERY basic HTML and PHP coding.
- Understand proper social media etiquette and sincere engagement, while also learning how to automate.
- Discover the importance of RSS feeds and their subscribers.
- Staying true to the core values and beliefs while collaborating with other like-minded individuals.
- Research, read, discuss, read some more, collaborate, and most importantly…stay proactive!
Now that I think I have the swing of things and have been lurking around the blogsphere, I’ve decided to add some personality…make this something personal, find ways to materialize what I’ve gathered into something meaningful, opposed to writing robotic “content friendly” posts simply to appease the search engines’ crawlers.
With that said, I must express my deep, sincere gratitude for the wonderful people I’ve encountered along the way. The level of friendly engagement has made me realize the power of blogging, the world of social media (twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc…), and how social networking has the ability to bring together so many people they we never knew existed. The level of synergy that is available to us is extremely powerful. With the tools of a laptop, a internet connection, the motivation to seek like-minded people, as well as the passion to help other achieve their goals, I am convinced that there is absolutely nothing that cannot be achieved.
Now, I know that the last sentence of the previous paragraph may have some overtones of the cliche our parents told us for all those years: “You can do anything that you put your mind to.” Well, it’s true and the efforts and their results far outweigh the consequences of living in fear or sustaining a lack of confidence. I know, I’ve been there a few times throughout my short life and I am so thankful for those who’ve been there to help pick me back up and support me during those dark times.
I’m going to go ahead and warp this post up with a couple words: Dream Big.
Call me “Juno” if you will, call me a post-modernist, or call me some new age yuppie type…but we’re in the 21st century and the rules have changed. Globally, as Robert Dickie recently tweeted: “We did not just go through a “recession” we went through a “reset.” This is important to understand. Many of the rules have changed.” It’s time to throw away the status-quo and begin leading from within. It will allow for a reflection so bright that it will glow amongst all of those close to you and those you’re about to meet along the way.
I’d like to thank Tom Schulte for the inspiration of the title and thought of this blog post. Thank you Tom.
