Saturday, March 29, 2008

On the web, a click can go for miles

I have today been wandering from my camp on the web, and have found some wonderful sites, just by hitting "next blog" on the top and linking from each site found. This really is opening up new worlds for me. I have learned some new words in Estonian, "Eesti" is how it is said there. "Ilus" is one of the words for beautiful in the language, which I wanted to know when I saw Annika's pictures of her country, and a sunset or sunrise on her blog.

Then I found Mirja and Marjam, also from Estonia, Tallinn to be exact. But then while looking, I found a woman, a singer whose name is Maarja-Liis Ilus, and she is a singer from Estonia.

I find this mind-expanding and inspiring in so many ways. For one, I have always wanted to learn more languages, I speak English and Spanish fluently, and am learning Portuguese, well, Brazilian Portuguese, I studied Deutsch in college which really helped in Hungary when I could not communicate in Magyar (Hungarian), but found another common language. There are so many people now willing to share their thoughts and feelings and history, that we are in fact in a different world in this new century than any we have known before.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Of all the places I have been...

The place that left me in awe, at every turn, and wanting to go back and take my wife was Budapest, Hungary. I was there on assignment with Honeywell to train the European technical support staff for a week, in the new VPN solution we were rolling out.

What was so memorable about the trip was the feeling that I had stepped out of a time machine. Nevermind that I was in the castle district, at the Budapest Hilton, but then they gave me a room with a view looking east over the Danube river into the sunrise every morning, with a castle turret interjecting medieval architecture into a breathtaking view of the sprawling city, just across the river.

The young technical support staff was hospitable, professional, and very intelligent, most of them speaking a minimum of 3 languages. I found myself feeling less like the expert from out of town and more like I wished I could stay longer. I was able to get to know several of them during the week I was there, and told them quite honestly, I would be back. I guess the icing on the cake was that I had just discovered the music of Corinne Bailey Rae right before the trip, so I had her latest CD at the time, and so, as beautiful music can often imprint memories more permanently into our souls, so did her beautiful, lilting voice singing "Breathless", "Choux Pastrie Heart" and others, do the same to mine.

My life will forever be different for experiences like the ones that I collected in one short week in a country still shrouded in its Medieval architecture, and poised to gain considerably from the growing modernization spreading across Central Europe like a brushfire. I will return, and look forward to spending more than a week.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Don't Worry, Be Happy!

My days are full of so much wonder and excitement lately. I am hardly able to settle down enough to type. I am very pleased that I have found this outlet for my journaling, and for connecting with so many in the world who are like-minded.

There is hardly a day that goes by, that I am not in some way, left more deeply aware that I am not in this by myself, but am part of a grand plan.

My wife of almost 18 years and I, have traveled quite a journey of discovery. The path has not been without its pain, and its tough memories, but I am convinced now more than ever before, that each moment, each event that happens, is neither good nor bad in itself, but is exactly as we see it and make it, however we wish. We create in each moment, the life that tomorrow, we will reflect back upon. We choose to be loved, by loving others, and the more we give, the more we receive. In true alchemist form, we make more of anything for ourselves by giving it away first.

Just as worry creates for us the very situations we feared, so also do all our thoughts create whatever we focus on, but we must be willing to take the positive to the same extremes to which we take the negative. Some try positive for a while, but when they do not get the results they want, they say, "See, this stuff doesn't work!"

We can, if we desire it, decide that we will only focus on things that take us where we want to go, and we can use that to create a happy marriage, a life of wealth or peace, or whatever we intend. Likewise, we can continue to let random thoughts take us in circles. In fact, I have often thought that is the real reason that most of us live common, seemingly random lives. Because we neither focus on the good nor the bad, but let the winds of random thinking run us around in circles.

How about this? Decide where you want to go, map it out, make a journey plan, and each day when you awake, prepare yourself again, to resume where you left off the previous day. Each day, look ahead, never wetting the finger and checking the winds, to follow where they blow you. Then you can say, with each new day, "I can't wait for the next, for in it, I will see and feel new things that will take me closer to my goals, to my dreams."

Then and only then, can you know the joy of the journey, and stop waiting for the prize at the end for fulfillment. The prize is a life well lived. Live life with the expectancy of a child who can't wait for tomorrow's adventure, and you will see how quickly life can become one again.

Monday, March 24, 2008

If you build it, they will come...

I have been very impressed with how quickly my once shaky ideas for what I would make of my presence on the web have unfolded. I am pleased and animated by what is emerging for me as a very clear path with instructions lighting the way as I forge ahead.

The website linked in this blog, called http://www.startupnation.com is one I stumbled upon when doing a search for how people are using the term "flesh out" v. "flush out" as regards an idea or a plan. My vote is firmly in the "flesh out" camp and I believe the evidence for that stance is solid.

My point however, is that I am taking nothing as accidental, but am building upon the framework of casual browsing and "fleshing out" that framework as I go, into what I hope will be a thriving service on the web. Here again, I refer to the linked article, "Doing Business by Doing Good: Social Entrepreneurship" as proof that ending up at startupnation.com was no accident, because I have to say, at first I doubted whether or not my idea was viable enough to take the plunge. However, as the article says, and as the movie quote that titles this article suggests, if there is a need that will be filled by this inspiration, then they will come. The corollary to this states however, that if you don't build it, your chances of having someone ask you to, are pretty much nil. In other words, "it is impossible to steer a parked car". Action is the best cure for fear.

I saw another quote in an article today that takes me along the same lines, inspiring me on the way to establishing a service for those who are nervous, or simply uninformed about how easy it is to safely live on the web, and that article came to me in one of my newsletters that I have flooding my inbox. It was stated by Andrew Snyder of TFN (Today's Financial News).

"The nation’s leaders have long admitted the nation’s days as a manufacturing power are over. We are a full-fledge service economy. So we need to act like one. " – Andrew Snyder

To me that means that we simply as a nation, need to allow for and accept the changes that are hitting us at breakneck speed and stop putting into office, leaders who will continue to prop up failing sectors of our society, which only delays the inevitable demise in most cases, and drains the coffers that the American Taxpayer pays into, in the process. We are ramping up for another momentous change in the direction of our work world, as a nation, and we need to stop allowing the ones afraid of change to dictate how public monies are spent, because it ultimately dilutes the amounts that can be spent in the legitimate growth areas of our economy. More on this in another blog.

Check out startupnation.com. It is worth your visit to see some of the thinking that is shaping the decade ahead.

Friday, March 21, 2008

The Worldwide Success Network

My very dear friend, Leslie Householder, author of the wildly successful The Jackrabbit Factor: Why You Can, and the equally uplifting and inspiring Hidden Treasures: Heaven's Astonishing Help with Your Money Matters has invited me to join and to invite my friends to join, the above linked Worldwide Success Network. They are actually running a promotion right now, that if I refer 3 friends to join, and use my name, James Williams, as the person that referred them, that I and the 3 that join will receive some powerful gifts including her book, The Jackrabbit Factor in PDF format, and will allow us to become part of a growing network of successful people who are changing the face of business and success on the internet.

Please take a look at it, and send some of your friends to do the same. Tell them to use your name in the referred to box. There is no charge for joining and you will be opting in to a network of people that are making a difference in the lives of so many others.

Leave me a comment, and let me know what you think.


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Resistance is futile...

Seems we see these cycles from time to time, though lately, a lot more often, where we feel the economy squeezing out another old industry, or facilitating its transfer to the third world to make room for more prosperity, and yet this prosperity never comes without a price.

The price is usually change, and while those of us who clearly remember Ronald Reagan, have a harder time changing, it should be obvious to all of us by now, that we will either change with the times or wither in misery as the default standard of retirement in the system, becomes a poorer and poorer prospect for survival.

Change we must, and change we will, and those who dig in and resist, will change also, but the change will hurt more, and it will seem to them as though nothing good has happened. Those of us however, who have decided to go with the flow, can do so without surrendering any of our morals or absolutes, and will find along the way, that this "Brave New World" has unlimited possibilities and offers us new vistas unheard of in previous generations.

So here it is, my entry into the rapids. I come prepared for the exhilarating ride, and look ahead to the rush it promises.

To quote one of my favorite novelists, Kurt Vonnegut, "I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."

Sounds risky, but so is sitting here doing nothing while the IT world transforms again, and thousands of dollars per second fly by me on the internet, while I sit and wait for that next job call on my resume. NOT! gonna happen. ;)