Most of us are familiar with the Kubler-Ross 5 stages of grief, in fact my Active Rain blogging start began with this as I was undergoing cancer treatment in Houston a little over 2 years ago, so since my thoughts turned to that during the holidays I thought I would share my personal journey here and how I feel about it. This is in no way the truth for anyone but me nor is it meant as a criticism to anyone in particular including the folks at Active Rain. This is more about what I would call my personal growth and discovering what works for me. So hear goes with stage one....
Denial: I had started blogging training in 2007 with The Real Estate Tomato after I had heard them speak at Inman News Real Estate Connect. As the training went through 2008 I heard them speak about Active Rain which I belonged to but never participated in. I was totally into my own content and control of it but I thought it probably won't work but I will give it a try since the Tomato felt good about it, but no way this place will help me.
Anger: Okay, I decided to blog like mad here since during treatment they tell you to keep busy and focus on your work and it's future, but no one is reading my post! I felt like all of you were Whoville and I was the Grinch, how dare you ignore me! This place is lame and I am doing business on my website blog. Sure, I am getting indexed in ten minutes on my AR blogs but isn't it the comments that count? Well there is the points and I am competitive so I will press on.
Bargaining: Here is the deal, if someone will just comment then I will continue. It happened! But I need another deal. If I will get featured then I will continue. It happened! But I need another bargain. If I get another featured post and over 50 comments I will continue. It happened! But where is all this business that other members are talking about? They say that they are washed in the Rain and the phone is ringing off the hook. Could this be like Show and Tell in grade school where the biggest whopper wins if you tell it right? Which leads to...
Depression: Who cares if other REALTORS® comment or not, it's all BS, and it is starting to look like a closed society wth the same people featured and endless posts about my journey to a gazillion points, Boring!. Is this a cult or a real estate platform? And what's this deal about Jay Thompson and cutting the orignal people off if they don't blog enough according to The Gods of the Riverworld (Had to throw in a Phillip Jose Farmer SciFi series reference)? I quit! And I did and took the ball and went home. But what about those Google indexing triumphs that did lead to business? So that got me to, Radar says wait for it.....
Acceptance: On a personal note when you are fighting cancer or any debilitating disease acceptance does not mean giving up, and I never did, it just means to accept that things happen and it is up to you as an individual to make you peace and give it meaning, but from experience I can tell you that does not happen without a support group, so let me move on to...
Acceptance of Active Rain: I started with Active Rain at a precarious time and it helped me through the darkness. At this time if you comment fine and if you don't fine. It you feature me fine, if you don't fine. My peace with Active Rain is that the recent video blogs I have done and embedded here have been indexed by Google in as little as 6 minutes I kid you not. I am blogging for the public and their acceptance of me as someone who knows something valuable they need. I will continue to blog on my 3 major web sites and video has got me fired up. I don't expect that my phone will ever ring off the hook becasue of Active Rain, but it is ringing and will stay a part of my business plan. I will continue to read other post that tell me something new like Jeremy Blanton's today. And I will continue to say thank you to those here who knew of my situation in 2008 and without ever meeting me gave me incredible support. I will also keep talking about what I like about AR and what I don't because all of us can get better with intelligent discourse and disagreement with reason. And I wish everyone here a prosperous 2011 and good health. Especially good health, it is a precious gift that I accept because I am one of the lucky ones who made it.
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