photo courtesy of Corey Leopold

I had a lot going on in my life.

It was Christmas Day 2008.  I was just less than a month into blogging here on ActiveRain, just slightly over that with my blogging on AgentGenius, and my fledgling site looked nothing like it does today.  My real estate career wasn't yet a year old and I was just a few short days from celebrating my second year in my new city.  I loved what I knew of real estate, but hadn't really found my footing quite yet.

I had had two featured posts by that Christmas morning and I was thrilled that anyone cared enough about what I wrote to think it was worthy of a feature.  This crisp (yeah, it was actually slightly cool for Texas) morning, I woke up before my wife and had some time to reflect on a lot of things.  While sitting having a cup of coffee, I opened my laptop on the deck out back and typed out a post.  It was a personal post.  One of my first.  It had nothing to do with real estate and everything to do with me.  It was just some thoughts in my head that spilled down onto my keyboard and into your households via ActiveRain.

Shortly after clicking the "Post Blog Entry" button, my phone began to vibrate.  I actually doubted many people would even read the post, as it was Christmas morning, but I was wrong.  ActiveRain was alive that morning.  Alive and reading.  When I realized the post had been featured, I chuckled at the fact that I was probably one of the few that wrote a post on Christmas morning, so the pickings must have been a little slim.

Regardless, I learned something that day.  Something that has served me well in blogging and real estate.  Being yourself is a crucial component to any business plan - especially one involving blogging.  I knew it before this, but seeing the reactions from others here at ActiveRain really hit home that morning.  I haven't stopped since.  It was a pretty cool gift that morning and one I hope to repeat soon (Christmas isn't that far away).

Read the original post here on ActiveRain:

Christmas morning and the silence.