desperate for change

Or I am just pretending that there is juicy things going on that is too hot for the public to handle. Or I am just making up some excuse of why I haven’t posted anything in the last while.

Let’s talk about Facebook. You have people who are in an uproar about Facebook opening up your data to the world. Why is it that the same people aren’t making the same complaints about LinkedIn? You know that if you pay up for LinkedIn you can go through and look at people’s profiles.

The difference is in the way the the different social networks have been marketed. LinkedIn is like a professional job fair; you want anyone who is a potential employer to see you there. On the other hand, Facebook is like a college party; and the rules for the college party is that you might whisper and gossip about what’s going on but you certainly do not broadcast to the whole world.

And then you have Twitter, blogs, etc. It’s too much! I would be really curious about future public figures and politicians five to ten years from now: will they have to do a net-purge of their online footprints in order to have a presentable image?

What about for myself? What about this blog?

In the last while of being dormant, I have been reading different blogs and making a note of what things I enjoy reading. I think that I still aspire to be a better writer, but in order to do so, you need to have real content. In order to have real content – you have to “give” something away. Perhaps it is something that happened privately or perhaps it is your new exciting theory of how the workplace interaction plays out.

I’m going to have to work on being a little bit more interesting first, haha!

(PS – Just moved my blog to a different hosting service. This post is mostly to make sure everything is still working fine.)

Perhaps the better question is whether your having a blog should be advertised to your current and/or future employers? On the one hand, this is precisely the kind of thing that might help you stand out when you are applying for positions. But on the other hand, you just feel like your personal life should be segregated from your work life. In the online realm, this is obviously blurred to the point whereby it is nearly one and the same; so much so, that people in certain fields (such as teachers and politicians) have to either live without an online trail or professionally manage their online image.

In line with the “doing whatever it takes theme,” we have to stand out in whatever we do in life to get noticed. So here’s to my current boss and future bosses: Google away, you’ve pretty much hit on the real Alfred Pang here.

There is something ironic about using intuition to decide that I should sign up on a course about intuition. This is a VSB course called “Intuition: The Goldmind Method”. This is a two week class and I was at the first session last Saturday.

(The teacher, Bryan Doyle, is familiar to me. A few years ago, I was in a class he was teaching at the time about entrepreneurship. I remembered that during last class, he was talking about auras, energies, and the like and how it helped in his own business dealings. I probably got hooked then.)

During the session last Saturday, he talked about many things. Maxwell Maltz. Visualization. Expectations. Creating versus uncovering. Being neutral. Beta, alpha, theta, delta brain frequencies. The Goldmind relaxation exercise. Auras. Source of truth and intuition. Healing. Soul, spirit, mind, body interactions. Dream interpretation (he interpreted some of ours).

Fascinating. I think that deep down, I’d like to belive that I have some Heroes-like abilities waiting to be unleashed.

“Blog more,” she said.

I know exactly what she was talking about – I mean, I haven’t had anything new since September. Was I uninspired? No, not really. Maybe it was the crazy hours of work that was sucking my energy? No, I had energy for my salsa class. I think that I was just in a bit of a rut. A kick in the pants was what I really needed.

Of course, the question is: Why would I even want a kick in the pants?  Why blog? Even Seth Godin admits that personal blogs really aren’t bringing home the bacon, so to speak.

While I am still inspired by the success of some bloggers, I realize that I am who I am. The world is already better off with a Steve Pavlina; I need to find my own blogging success as Alfred Pang, rather than trying to imitate or copy someone else.

What does this mean in terms of my writings? How will I define blogging success? For your information, I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of living off AdSense revenue through this website.

As an introvert, it is pretty difficult to get inside my head through conventional means. I am pretty sure that there are people who are similar to me. Writing is an exercise in getting ideas out in a clear and understandable representation. And for those of you that are keeping score, blogging is a “staying upwind” activity. (Upwind = hard, with an uncertain chance of success; forces you to think and become better as a result.)

All I want is for someone to read my blog and say, “Yes, me too. I thought I was the only weird one.” That is success for me. I don’t claim to have all the answers. I don’t even want to claim that I am adding significant value to your life through my writings.

All I want to do, is to let you know that this shiny InterWebs is full of strange and wonderful humans, just like you and me.