My good friend Joanna Young issued a challenge back on December 5:
“Select the one post from your archive that you think is your best piece of 2008″
Now that’s a challenge – evaluating your own body of work over the course of 12 months.
I once heard Billy Joel refer to his songs as children, and that’s an apt description of blog posts too. You tend to love them all (well, almost all of them), and so it’s hard to put one over the other.
In this case, however, it really wasn’t a hard decision, because of the issuer of the challenge.
Back in May I asked my readers for suggestions as to how to improve my blog. Joanna gave me this excellent piece of advice:
“You might find it useful to try writing an ‘about the blog’ page to add to the ‘about you’ one: what would you tell a new visitor in a short page (no scrolling) about what they can hope to find at your blog. Might be a valuable exercise, for new readers and subscribers, but also for you.”
I did end up writing an “About the Blog” page, and Joanna was right, it was a valuable exercise for me. Because of the introspection necessary to write such a page, I was able to “nail” what I believe is the foundation of my philosophy of “Half-Fullism”:
Getting over the fear of being happy, balanced by the realism of the rhythms of life.
I also dug deeper into my personal reasons for blogging, and all boiled down to this:
I want to give you the best of what’s inside my head and my heart, knowing that the greatest rewards are in what you give me back.
This wasn’t my most popular post from 2008, but it sure was the most important one, from the standpoint of defining my blogging “raison d’être“.
So now, in compliance with Joanna’s instructions, I finish this post with this “official” summation:
This post is simply the best because it crystallized my thinking as to why I was blogging in the first place – to reach out and cultivate positive and mutually rewarding relationships through my philosophy of “Half-Fullism”.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Subscribe By RSS
Subscribe By E-mail
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Terry, I think this a fantastic selection, and I love the way you’ve laid out your thinking here.
Meeting you was one of my highlights this year. I’m sorry I won’t make it back to Chicago in May, but I know we’ll meet again somewhere, sometime, before too many more moons go by.
Terry – found my way here from one of Joanna’s twitter updates. I like the “about this blog” concept. Your interpretation adds a personalized dimension that as you say “answers the question why should you read this stuff?” Thanks for sharing!
@wiredprworks on twitter.com
Terry, these are beautiful words from someone who truly has a beautiful heart. You, Terry are simply one of the best.
Terry,
I started my blog for a similar reason: I reached a point in my personal life and career where I wanted to “give back” – specifically to small non-profits.
John