Blog

My New Giving Tuesday Column

I love taking on exciting freelance writing assignments and while I still haven’t landed a monthly magazine column yet, I am excited to announce a new bi-weekly column.

Every Tuesday on Social Media Explorer will now be a #GivingTuesday. Each week a different non-profit will be profiled and readers will be encouraged to donate to them.

I couldn’t commit to doing this all by myself, so the very talented Marc Pitman will be splitting duties with me.

You can read more about the initiative and my first column which profiled The Fisher House Foundation.

If you have suggestions for future profiles, let me know.

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Happy New Year?

I missed all the usual New Years celebrations this go around.

The past couple of days I’ve ached all over and generally felt like ass. Thankfully, a couple days of doing nothing finds me starting to feel human again.

While my family and the neighborhood got together to watch the ball drop, I curled up on the couch with the animals and watched half a season of LA Ink.

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Menu, Build and Minimize in 2013

A new year has dawned and none of us know what 2013 holds.

As I encouraged everyone to do in Amazing Things Will Happen, I’ve been going through the three word exercise to focus myself for the new year.

For some reason it was harder than usual for me. Might be due to the fact that I came up with a longer initial list than in years past and thus narrowing it down to only three was a bigger challenge. But, I found the words and I now have the focus to make 2013 the year I need it to be.

My three words for 2013 are Menu, Build and Minimize.

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Making a Living With Maggie Interview

While some authors might not like the marketing phase of a book release, I love it.

Last week, I had the pleasure of being the guest on Making a Living With Maggie on SiriusXM. The show is part of the Martha Stewart Living Radio channel, so I was obviously very excited about doing it.

It was a great interview and I hope the audience enjoyed it since they are certainly the type of people I believe would benefit from reading Amazing Things Will Happen.

A special thanks to Media Monkeybiz for recording the show. They did a great job!

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Looking Back at 2012

As I write this, the rain is falling heavily on top of a night full of snowfall. It is a slushy mess of a gray New England morning and I have no desire to go out and shovel the driveway as I know must be done.

Instead, I’ve poured another cup of coffee and noticing that we have less than five days left in the year I thought it would be fun to look back at what unfolded in 2012.

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Olympus Tough TG-1 Delivers While Kayaking in Costa Brava

Earlier this year, Laura and I traveled to Spain when I spoke at TBEX.

The Visit Costa Brava tourism board showed us a great time after the conference was done with a series of expeditions around the Costa Brava area. You can see lots of photos from the trips, but today I want to focus on kayaking to the Gulf of Roses we took part in.

I chose this specific outing because I love spending time on the water, but also because I had been sent a Olympus TG-1iHS 12 MP Waterproof Digital Camera (affiliate link) to do a review of. Talk about a perfect combo!

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An Emotional Look Back at 2012

This time of year there are always tons of recap videos, but this one is something special.

If it doesn’t pull at your emotional heart strings, I’m not sue anything will.

Crazy to think all of this happened in a single year.

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Thirty Nine Years

Today marks the start of the last year of my current decade.

Sure, that is a weird way to look at it, but as the sounds of Sons of Anarchy fill my office that is how my brain is spinning.

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Instagram No Longer Safe For Kids?

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December 18th 5 pm Update - Instagram has responded to all of the questions on their blog. They clearly state that private accounts will remain private and that:

“it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos.“

This is why knee-jerk reactions and deleting accounts in a fit are never the right answer. Thank you Instagram for not ruining a great thing.

This update makes the heart of this post out of date, but parents NEED to be aware of what their kids are doing and where they are doing it.

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Be good. Be safe. Be smart.

So many thoughts and emotions. The dangerous combination of sadness and rage.

You have to say something. You have to react. Or do you?

It isn’t easy for anyone. We each react differently.

Some scream solutions and then scream louder when someone suggests something different.

People position, proclaim and pontificate as if sudden experts.

It already isn’t an easy time for many and now it is going to be a bit harder on all of us.

Take it slow. Get away from it all. Hug those you love. Quietly leave those you don’t.

We will get through this, somehow, we always do.

Be good.

Be safe.

Be smart.

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Preparing For The End

Once again we are approaching the end.

While some believe forever, I’m a bit more practical than that and have bought my 2013 calendar and await to hang it on my wall.

It is a time to finish up those goals you set for 2012, but perhaps more importantly it is time to start actively planning for the next twelve months.

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My First Time Seeing The Nutcracker

This past weekend The Boston Ballet invited Emily and I to come and experience this year’s performance of The Nutcracker.

It was her first time and only my second time going to the ballet and we had a great time.

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Rest In Peace

A well lived life is a series of remarkable moments.

We have no idea how many moments we are going to live while we walk the earth.

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Living a Well Rounded Life

Recently, I learned about a new service called Postrgram that I used to make the image above from my Instagram photos.

This got me thinking about how important having a variety of life experiences is to having a well rounded and fulfilling life.

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When It Becomes Real

I find it rather comical that in today’s world where I can create anything I want and sell it to the world, I still hold off on celebrating the launch of a new book until I find it in a traditional book store.

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