This is not a spambot blog post.  It’s really me - Al, at 7P Productions.  After a long hiatus, I’m posting an update.

Are You Back to Blogging Again?
Sort of.  You see, in my efforts to blog about achieving goals and dreams, I was actually getting further away from my own goals and dreams.  This blog originally was created to track my journey on becoming a writer, and now I’m picking up on that journey again.  We’ll see where this goes.

Why Did You Stop Blogging?
In all honesty, I never really made a conscientious effort to stop.  In my last blog entry, I talked about winning some contracts and doing well in spite of the economic downturn.  Well, when you show that you are competent with your work, people will expect even more from you. I simply got caught up with all that, and I got very busy, very quick.  I was hoping to come back to write about how to be successful in business during an economic downturn (which I may eventually do), but I simply was too busy with all the new contract work that needed to get done.

Quite frankly, I’m glad that I did not write that blog because the truth was that I was actually failing.  I lost track of what was really important to me and what my ultimate goals were.  My work was consuming my time with family and friends, my stress level increased significantly, and my dreams of becoming a writer kept getting pushed aside. I didn’t intentionally stop blogging, but simply told myself I’ll pick it up again in a couple of weeks or so.  However, if I had continued blogging, I would have perpetuated the hypocrisy of achieving goals and dreams.  My short term goals were short-circuiting my long-term dream.

Why Are You Blogging Again?
So that my journey on being a writer can start again.  So that my goals can be aligned with my dream again.  So that the remaining precious days of my life can never be wasted again.

A lot has happened since my last blog post.  When I last posted an article in early September, John McCain was leading in the polls and the Dow Jones was 3,000 points higher than it is today.

Oh, and the US lost a ton of jobs.  They originally reported a loss of 159,000 job losses in September, the worst in five years.  Turned out that they were off (by a lot).  Instead, there was a loss of 403,000 jobs in September, followed by 320,000 job losses in October.  November topped them all: 533,000 jobs were lost, the worst in 34 years (which also brings the total to 1.256 million over the last three months alone).

They say that one sad story is tragic, but a thousand of them is a statistic.  It’s very easy to forget that every single job loss has a person, a story, a life that was attached to that job, and when we’re talking about numbers this big, it’s simply overwhelming.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this post after such a long hiatus.  During the last recession in the early 2000’s, I was one of those statistics.  It was my first job after being done with school.  Ever since grade school, I was told to get good grades so I worked hard at it.  In college, I was told that engineers would always be in demand so I worked hard in that major.  When I worked for an internet company, I was told to work hard and I would get rewarded in stock options.  The company went bankrupt, my stock options were worthless and I was out of a job.  I remember telling myself, “It wasn’t supposed to end this way.  I did what I was told.  I was faithful and worked hard but I have nothing to show for it.”  I was angry and unemployed.

Fast forward to the present.  I had to take a break with my blog to write a proposal for the company I work for today.  While I was writing that proposal, I got news of winning a previous proposal I wrote (I mentioned it in my last post).  So what about that proposal that made me take a break from blogging?  I just found out I won that too.

What changed?  Getting laid off a few years ago taught me the hard lesson that I can’t let others think for me - I need to think for myself.  I also learned that the Puritanical devotion of working hard is not nearly as valuable as working smart.

I’ve always wanted to get back to blogging, but the recent economic turn has really inspired me to pick it up again.  I was in the middle of redesigning the blog layout for a relaunch, but I’m not sure I can wait that long.  There’s chock full of stuff I want to write about!  I started this blog as an outlet for myself to help people do the right things for pursuing their goals and dreams.  It seems like a good time for me to blog about it again.

Just wanted to share with you that I have a guest post up at Write to Done called Use Michael Bay as Your Writing Muse (wow, they actually accepted my post!). It’s a fun read, so I hope you get a chance to check it out.

Also as a brief update, I’ve been fully immersed with a work proposal in my day job. While I was working on this proposal, I also got the good news of a new contract win from a previous proposal of mine! The good news is I succeeded in bringing more work to my company, but it also means that I now have more work that I need to find time to do.

Things should settle next week, and I have a few lessons learned from all this that I want to write about in the upcoming posts. In the meantime, check out the fun post that’s currently at Write to Done!

Image credits: focal intent

Lately I’ve been going through a change of heart. They say that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, but only that you tried. I don’t believe this anymore.

I don’t want the doctor to just “try” and heal me from a life-threatening illness, I need the doctor to succeed! My bank will not accept that I “tried” to pay my credit card bills, my payments must be timely received or else my credit score gets affected. For these types of cases, simply having the intention will not make up for the failure to deliver.

This line of reasoning is making me think more results-oriented and focus more on the bottom line. It also got me to ask myself a more fundamental question: is it who you are or what you do that really matters?

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You’re faced against the establishment and all the rules are against you. Those rules are there for a reason - to protect the haves and to keep out the have-nots, and you’re one of the have-nots.

To succeed in such situations, sometimes you have to break the rules. If you’re willing to do what it takes to win, do it right. You’ll need the criminal’s mindset if you want to pull this off. Here are the guidelines for using the criminally-minded approach. However if you get caught, better not rat me out!

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