I almost forgot...

I almost forgot that today’s my Active Rain birthday. I’m officially a toddler now having posted my first blog here two years ago on November 23, 2008.

My friend Richard Weisgerber from Microsoft knew what I was up to and was first to comment to help get me properly launched. Richard and I have known each other since 1980. We met when I was working a New Music program for a nonprofit called And/Or on Capitol Hill in Seattle (a different wacky music adventure regarding the future).

My coworker at the time, Matt Sweet also chimed in on day one to encourage my first steps here. We were then on a mission of discovery just hacking out a new working hypothesis. The world as we knew it, the way we communicate, the way we were going to do business made a monumental paradigm shift. In a sincere effort, we wanted to make sure our company was at the forefront. It was an amazing five year adventure exploring the new cyber frontier internet fandangle thingy that would soon be known as social media.

Active Rainer Karen Cooper discovered my first post out of the blue and commented. I met Karen in Medford on my travels for work. I came down to Southern Oregon to give a social media (I mean internet marketing) and prospecting workshop for area real estate professionals. It was fortuitous in that most people I would meet in person from then on, I would already know online.

It seems so long ago, yet so like yesterday morning…

I feel at times like I should have gone farther, faster, better… And yet, I’m light years from where I started. The world certainly changed a lot in the past two years. I know I’ve learned a lot along the way. Excusing this exception, I did learn it’s a good practice to keep it short and simple online. And a picture’s worth at least 1000 words and great Google Juice if you do it right. Yet I don’t follow my own advice at times. Maybe when you’re in uncharted territory it just takes a little while longer to get there when you really don’t know where it is exactly you’re going?

I love this wacky dance with virtual Shiva most days, yet enough is enough sometimes. You ever notice now how much time we spend having to listen to some message before we can move on to what we came here for in the first place?

At times I think those awesomely wonderful benefits I'm supposed to get from that great big knowledge base in the cloud are not going to trickle all that long way down to me and my regular folk type friends. It’s like we made the jump online to get away from the mind numbing one way noise of television, so the noise followed us online.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But I did see the movie.

Talk about human behavior… One of the most profound things to me this year was learning that Google is very concerned about the loss of your eye time on its search page. Where’d you go? Well most of you went over to Facebook to hang out and bull shit with your friends. That’s irony don’t you think?

Don’t worry Google, I’m still here…

I feel nostalgic on occasion for the old days before it was so organized, when it was a hodge podge of small frontier like towns with great distances between them. I didn’t mean to rant on my AR birthday. I hope it doesn’t sound that way. Blogging for me is many things and a passion for sure. I’ve had the great opportunity to learn and practice here in fellowship.

Today I stop and smell the roses. I stand on the shoulders of great people looking at life with gratitude. I gather my strength, acknowledge my accomplishments, and assess what I’ve learned. Thank you God, Goddess, All there is...

As I gaze towards the horizon I see mountains beyond. They're not on the map.

Well nice talkin to you but I gotta go now. Daylight’s burnt. Tomorrows almost here and the adventure, well… it ain’t over yet and I’d best be gettin an early start.

Hey… Thanks for listening. It’s been real nice and I appreciate it. Take care… I’ll see ya later.

Thank you all… I’ve met some really interesting people here and have made many friends. Truly, where conversation exists, so does opportunity…

Blessings… and have a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday

"Where there's conversation, there's opportunity."

Please Note - The views expressed herein reflect only the individual’s personal views
and are not the views of the author’s employer.

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René Fabre cell: 425-749-9296 rfabre@firstam.com

First American Title 24722 104th Ave SE Suite 100 Kent, WA 98030