I am quite serious about this blog. That is I am committed to its success. I intend for it to become a resource for self development that combines some of the following elements:
- Narrative – part of it has to tell my story. I like blogs that tell a story in a coherent way. I don't like blogs that are just collections of links or written in such a cryptic way that they are impossible to understand.
- Self development – every aspect of life is a part of this. I am a father, worker, mentor and a number of other things. All of these come together in the person of Chris Gribble in a unique way. It is very important that I learn to be myself totally.
- Connection to the wider world – in the web world this means that I have to demonstrate a commitment to the web community by commenting and responding to the feedback that I receive. I am not an island and as the following quote demonstrates I am only a small part in what has become a huge conversation.
No one could have predicted that, just as no one could have predicted the extraordinary, dizzying multiplying of the number of blogs being written. (I don't say read.) That number has been doubling every six months for the past three years: there are now, as of July 31, more than 50m blogs on the internet; 175,000 new blogs are created every day – that's two every second. The dominant languages (they jockey from month to month) are Chinese, Japanese and English. There are 1.6m blog posts a day. What does that mean? What should we think about it? It's hard to know where to start, other than to say that those figures are from Technorati, a blog-tracking and searching website that is one of the indispensable sites for anyone with an interest in the net. What is a typical blog? Who knows? Somebody wittering about what they had for breakfast, or complaining about their boyfriend, or posting terrible photographs of their dog, or how they played Pong last night and it was more fun than some of their new games, or how lousy it is being a policeman, or the sex life of an American expatriate in China. (That blog, Chinabounder, has caused a national scandal in China, and spawned a hunt for the blogger that is itself the subject of a blog, Who Is Chinabounder?) It's almost impossible to think of a subject that isn't being blogged about.(source)
- Perserverance – one of the key ingredients for success in any venture. That is yet to be proved but this is not a first time attempt at a blog. I have another that I have posted regularly at for nearly two years. It is mostly about my kids and really is a labour of love.
So here I am blogging away. Amazingly people read it. Actually more and more people every day are coming to this site and reading what I have to say. Thanks for being interested. Self development is a fascinating subject that allows the potential for unlimited growth. Therefore I should never run out of content. And as time goes on my own story will continue to unfold. There is still a lot to learn and I certainly haven't stopped yet.