CHESSNOID

Today was a pretty active day for me. Meaning, I didn’t just stay home and cruise the internet and blog. Which I suspect many of us do. LOL.

I got a haircut. Then, I went to work which was only a half day. Yeah! After that I met up with my sister and her husband. They have been married for about a year and a half and look happier than ever. I think they actually have a good connection and am very happy for them. This has nothing to do with the fact they paid for lunch. I know I am extremely lucky in my own personal relationship with my wife. I think sometimes people in our lives become jealous or envious and do things to sabotage that. The best defense is to avoid people like that.

I think it is the same thing at work, the internet, and all the things we do in life. There are people who have a tendency to be negative or just look at the glass half full on a consistent basis. Then there are those who focus on all the positive things in their life. I make time to show gratitude and feel the blessings of all the good things in my life. This is an internal process for me. I think some people do it through meditation, prayer, or just sharing their joy with others. I like to do a little bit of each. Somehow, I think that energy carries over in everything I do. I do listen to self help books and look for things that convey positive messages all the time. I believe that is how I have become happy and grateful for everything.

When I was getting just 5 to 10 hits when I started my blog, I was really happy. Yes, just 5 or 10 hits a day from family members and friends who were nice enough to give me a courtesy cameo appearance. That was a big deal and a very positive experience. Then my wife suggested a site to join to help me get some more traffic. I was happy she supported my endeavors for my creative outlet. That site had poor customer service but funny enough I found MyBlogLog through that place. I joined that community and was amazed to find other people with the same interests and willing to be open about their own blogging experience. Which of course I was grateful for. I started to sing praises of this site and even promoted on my site. Just like I am now. That lead me to other communities that were similar and helped promote my site like Blogcatalog, WebetUr, Romlet. My traffic at that point after joining these communities probably jumped to about 50-100 visitors a day. Yes, I was about 10 times happier when I first started if that is possible. The great part was meeting all these people who live in every part of the world and communicate like we were school friends since we were kids in kindergarten. Of course, it only kept getting better each day.

Other bloggers would then email to ask for a digg or stumble. Really didn’t understand how this worked but I wanted to help so I did. That opened up my world even more. As I experimented with these applications, I was somehow to get some crazy traffic surges. To be honest with you, I am extremely grateful for it but really can’t believe it. I am just hoping I can continue building many new friends, learning online, and continue loving life.

I have 3 counters I look at daily to see the stats for my site. It’s really weird that none of them correspond with each other. The good thing is they are all in the same range. I read a blog that says you shouldn’t check your stats daily because it will make you sad. The funny thing is I look at it daily and it makes me feel good. I think it all just depends what you focus on. I am grateful for every visitor who comes to my site and for every comment I get. It is nice to see high numbers, but really for me it is better just to be grateful for every visitor and appreciate that for what it is.

Thank you Emma for the Bodacious Blog award. This is icing on the blogging cake.

I put up a brand new page just for my blogroll and hopefully it works out. Just got to figure out how to dress it up and make it look nice.