Lets Get Started...

Welcome!

Like many bloggers it took me some time to decide whether to do this or not. What pushed me over the edge was simple - blogs can influence, blogs can inspire, blogs are alive. It hit me when I started to read a friend's blog about his 6 month study in Australia - not only am I able to keep up with his adventures, but through my pal I'm learning about life in Adelaide, the culture, the challenges he faces as a visitor and some of the random things that have happened to him that are lessons to us all. It comes down to this, my life is a little richer thanks to this blog.

Another old friend of mine uses her blog to teach creativity and marketing, what she does for a living. Now I don't always agree with my friend's point of view, but the fact that she gets it across and I can read and react to it makes for an interesting dynamic in our relationship. In reading her blog, I have come to appreciate my friend more than I used to when we worked together in one of the world's largest media companies almost 15 years ago. Back then she was a creative director and I was an account executive, and needless to say, we didn't see eye to eye on everything. E-mail was fairly new back then, and the internet, at least in Brussels where we were based, was pretty much non-existent in the work place. Would we have benefited from blogs, social networks and public profiles to bridge the gaps in understanding? I think the answer is without a doubt, yes.

So I decided to move forward with this blog. What will I blog about? Bear with me, the answer is not that simple. There are too many things to talk about in the world today, but I believe a blog is either subject specific or character specific. Since I don't want to talk politics, religion or philosophy, I have opted for the latter. This blog is an extension of the author, my experiences, my views and my interests, and this is a vehicle to share it. I look at life as a privilege, a gift that each of us receives at birth and its up to us to do what we will with it. I don't believe in the notion of 'inequality at birth'. I am a firm believer in the individual, and the power of each of us to make a difference at some level in our own lives first, and then in others'. So at the core of my blog I will focus on the individual and individuals experiences, individual accomplishments, individual failures, individual lessons, individual questions and individual beliefs. In short, this blog is going to be about lots of different things.

NO BOUNDARIES

Growing up in London and Brussels, I was often faced with lots of rules. I discovered early in my life that while necessary, I did not like boundaries because they were often imposed by others and failed to recognize my individual circumstance. Surely you know what I mean? For example, why were we never allowed to sit where we wanted in class back in elementary school? Every day for an entire year, we were expected to sit in the same seat all day long. One day, in fifth grade, I came into class and decided to sit in a different seat. What happened next was fascinating. First, the boy who usually sat in the chair I was occupying stood over me and scowled, not knowing what to say or how to react to this unexpected and unwelcome act of defiance. Before he had a chance to decide what to say or do, the girl sitting in front of him was screaming at me that I was in the wrong seat and needed to move, pleased with herself for pointing out my 'mistake'. As more of my classmates turned around in their seats to see what all the commotion was about, the teacher walked over and asked me to 'take my seat'. Having challenged the boundary of assigned seats, I gave up and moved back to my usual place, feeling both violated and misunderstood. Shouldn't I be free to sit where I want? Surely life is more interesting if we could change our seats once in a while? After all, the class room looks a little different from the first row than from the fifth row, does it not?

So I became someone who believes in pushing the boundaries but with some strict principles:

Principle 1 - never break the law when pushing the boundaries;

Principle 2 - never push the boundaries at the expense of another person;

Principle 3 - its not a game, its about challenging the status quo. Its the difference between settling for 'you can't' and asking 'why can't we?'.

So with this bit of background, you will understand why I wanted to limit the boundaries on this blog. If anything, we are going to broaden the perspective by touching on all the areas that make an individual exactly that, an individual.

So to help me launch this blog, I'd like to ask you to take a moment and ask yourself what makes you great? What do you bring to those in your life that only you can bring? Why are you so appreciated by others? And in case you have forgotten, you do matter to someone somewhere.