Saturday Morning Reflections from a long time....

Saturday Morning Reflections from a long time member of Active Rain: Glad I am able to post this!

 

Having been on this platform for so many years one of the benefits I have is, that I can recall some earlier times, events, moments, good bad and indifferent. There have been changes, people have come and gone. The long term history has been interesting to say the least. Some changes were for the better, others for the worse.

 From a historical perspective, with time comes tolerance to some events and intolerance to other events. In this community some members had better visions, others less (this statement also applies to the leadership and management over the years as well).

There was a time when the platform had stronger voices on many subjects including technology, learning, educating on various subjects from SEO, Blogging, Real Estate, Title Issues and the list goes on and on of the many positive things we learned and shared. Then again, there were stronger voices about Religion, Politics and the satisfaction as well as the dissatisfaction with changes, technical problems.

The common thread I saw, that there was a tolerance from the founders of Active Rain to have spirited discussions as well as they were open to and condoned strong positions about all the various subjects.

My cutting and sarcastic comments and posts were appreciated by some and not appreciated by others. Having taken a strong and intolerant position on incompetence, stupidity and ignorance has caused me to pay the price: I have lost some phony friends and some weaker people who did not have the strength to willingly and openly stand on my side, due to their concerns of what the ramifications of their actions might entail. At the same time, I have gained some real friends and those relationships will be lifelong. I have fallen out of favor with the powers to be over the years and in turn some good posts I have written were not featured. Hence the leadership would not acknowledge my wisdom, rather felt threated and behaved in a petty way. In the big picture none of it really mattered.

I always recalled what a very wise member said in a Public Post when all the spirited conversations were going on about technical glitches and about the lack of fairness to certain members:  Remember why you are here. Remember what you are trying to achieve.

I was able to pause, step back and reevaluate my state of frustrations.  Why did I join? Needless to say the list was short. I joined to get:

•         Referrals
•         New Clients

The side benefits were the unexpected events and occurrences:

•         Friends
•         Learned blogging
•         Social media skills
•         Niche market: International buyers & sellers; luxury buyers and sellers

There were others but I do not want to bore you with all of them. So you might ask why am I writing this post? Well I have not seen this prompt in a while being on this platform:

 

 

This website is under heavy load

We're sorry, too many people are accessing this website at the same time. We're working on this problem. Please try again later.

 

Having seen this message for over a couple of hours made me pause and reflect.  I would hate to see this platform fade away with all its strengths, weaknesses and faults. It has brought me a lot of benefits.

 

Now if you are new to this platform, let me give you a word of caution: Active Rain can be addictive and hazardous to reading books, because there is only so much time in a 24-hour day! Now with that said, I am thrilled that I am able to upload this post, since the platform is on line again.

 

If you are considering buying or selling a home, a luxury home, luxury investment real estate, luxury vacation homes, or luxury beach properties in Southern California, Los Angeles, Century City, Westwood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Marina Del Rey, Venice or Malibu, feel free to contact me at310.486.1002 (m) or homes@endrebarath.com or visit one of my websites at  http://www.endrebarath.com.  I am a Pet Friendly Realtor and I contribute a portion of my commission to local animal rescue organization