It’s been almost a year since my last post on be an original. You could say I took a sabbatical year away from the blog, albeit an unplanned one. It has been a beneficial time in many respects though.

As you know I blogged about personal development and personal productivity. And I liked it – in the early years anyway. I was growing and learning, and I shared my progress and my insights. It was fun.

I learned to blog

But in time I learned some more about blogging … and then I learned some things about how to write posts that attract readers … I learned about what it takes to build a voice … and to build a (personal) brand. I liked some of it, and disagreed on other things. But in general I grew and adjusted to what I had learned.

In the meantime I also got quite proficient with the technical aspects of blogging. I have a tech background, and I really enjoyed learning how this stuff works. Sometimes out of necessity, most of the times out of interest.

Personal development

I also read other personal development blogs … I read personal development books … I even watched some movies about it. And the more I learned about it … the more I started hating it!

I saw a lot of parallels between different authors, the same stuff over and over again … I saw a lot of regurgitation … writers claiming new insights as their own … while they were essentially repackaged insights, most of the time without attributing it to a source. Where is the originality in that?

But it wasn’t only the repackaged content, I also grew to hate the “let’s only tell the good stuff” writers, showing perspectives of fame and fortune, but omitting the effort and perseverance one needs to even get in the vicinity of that fame and fortune. They’re deceiving their audience and that bothers me (a lot actually!). The fact that the audience is also buying it (literally and figuratively) bothers me too. I didn’t want to be a part in that.

I also hated the “Listen to me – I’ll tell you how to live your life” writers, a pretty common trait among personal development writers. I’m guilty of this attitude in a couple (and then some) posts on be an original. I don’t regret it, it’s been a part of my path and it has helped me to get to new insights about myself (and the industry). But it’s not the attitude I’m going to have towards writing anymore, especially in something as personal as your development. Who am I to tell you how to live?

Life is not a set of easy step-by-step tricks. Life is complex, it’s emotional, and we all have a different starting point, different paths to follow and different lessons to learn. There is no such thing as “the best way” to live your life.

My path

By following a path that was not my own, it dawned upon me more and more that it did not feel authentic … even though that’s something I can only say in hindsight. I just felt a growing dislike of the blog and a serious lack of inspiration. There was no productivity solution to get me motivated again. There was no inspiration I could find to get me back on track. It bothered me at first, but after a while I accepted it as part of my path.

And now – almost a year later – that I can say that it was life (or my heart) telling me that it did not want to get back on that track … because it wasn’t my own. The further I moved away from my path, the more I lost my voice and motivation. Whether I moved away from my path, because I changed my voice, or vice versa … I don’t know. It’s not important.

It’s all about taking action

My last post before the sabbatical was a self-made photograph of a hot air balloon seemingly flying to the moon. I added a quote in it, that appealed to me, but that I did not understand very well. It’s been on my mind a lot in the past year.

It took a while for me to really understand that the emphasis in this quote has to be on TRYING (even though I did put an emphasis on it in the image). It doesn’t say:

“Every fool knows you can’t touch the stars, but that doesn’t stop the wise from knowing you should try anyway.”

It’s not about the knowledge, it’s about the action. And I have been taking action, while following my heart. And in hindsight I can relate them all back to my personal core values. I’ve focused on working as a teacher (Growth), I spent time with my family (Love), I’ve started working more as an entrepreneur (Freedom) in areas I really enjoy (Fun). Keeping in touch with my Authenticity is my challenge though, but it shouldn’t stop me from taking action. Through action comes insight.

So is this the end of be an original?

The answer is Yes, if you’re here to get quick recipes for how to live your life, or parts of it. I’m not going to do that (anymore). The answer is No, if you’re here to have a piece of my mind.

This blog has been most valuable for me when I was actively working on improving my life. At the times I was working on my goals. And when I was writing about how my values influence my life and my decisions. I’m going back to using be an original for that purpose. Goal setting, progress reports, core values and my opinions about stuff I encounter along the way on the path. My path.

This post The end of be an original … or not? was brought to you by be an original

This post is the first post I’m publishing on Be An Original on the new domain. It marks the beginning of a new phase of this blog. A new phase with a slightly different name and focus. It also marks the end of a transition phase, in which both a mental transition and a technical transition took place.

Dropping the how-to

This blog used to be “How to be an Original”, but from now on it’ll be known under the name “be an original“. And while that’s only a small change in the name, it does make a lot of difference in the meaning.

I grew to dislike the “how-to” name, because I associate how-to’s with tutorials, with step-by-step guides for getting from A to B. And that was not what I wanted to achieve with my blog. So I dropped the how-to in order to get a title that’s an appeal to people. Be an original!

It’s an appeal to wake up, and live your life consciously. To stop just getting along, to stop sheepwalking, and to start experiencing life. And it’s in the spirit of that appeal that I want to write, on all the aspects that are associated with it.

So that’s the start of the new phase of this blog.

New domain and beans

One of the things that was also bothering me was the previous domain. It was located at a subdomain of lodewijkvdb.com.

When I first started blogging I used Guy Kawasaki’s blog as the model for my own blog, and he had his name as the domain and the blog as a subdomain (and a “how-to” title as well…). So following his example, I created something similar.

And although that formula can be quite successful, I wanted to have my blog on a separate domain. So now it’s located at beanoriginal.net. And it feels great

With that domain name however, you can’t ignore the “bean” in there. So I used beans in the design and in the categories. Check out the archives to learn what categories there are and why they’ve gotten that particular name.

Technical transition

Moving the blog was quite a challenging task to be honest, but I managed to redirect virtually all links from the old blog to the new blog. So if you linked to me before: your link will not be broken (and thank you!).

The RSS feed is another story, because besides moving domain I also moved the feed from FeedBurner to FeedBlitz. To be honest, both are up and running now and everybody should get this post, one way or the other. I do urge you to update your feed address to:

http://feeds.beanoriginal.net/beanoriginal

Email subscribers will be transferred to FeedBlitz as well. You’ll get a notification mail with a link to FeedBlitz, where you need to reconfirm your subscription.

I do expect some technical glitches to come up over the coming week or so. They always do.

New beginnings

A new beginning with a new name at a new domain at the start of a new year. What a great start of the year! I hope your year will be great as well, and I’m looking forward to seeing you around again.

This post A new beginning was brought to you by be an original

That’s it.
Just wanted to let you know.
I am happy.

This post I am happy was brought to you by be an original

Dear Mr. My Samsonite Luggage,

Thank you for showing me the importance of writing a comment policy. Your recent comments – all three of them – have bypassed Akismet only because you actually wrote them yourself and they fit the content of the blog post. Akismet may not be smart enough to mark them as what they truly are: SPAM. Yet that’s what they are.

Yes sir, not only automated messages are spam. Empty comments that pretend to be real comments are spam too, but to be fair: you had no way of knowing. I had not composed a comment policy yet, so I’m not angry with you. Only disappointed.

You see, both of us know that the only reason you commented on all three posts is not because you were compelled by the geniality of the posts themselves. Nor were you blown away by the likeability of my person, or the imaginative writing on my humble blog. No sir, what you were truly attracted to, were the follow links in my Top Commentators section in the sidebar. Three comments would bring you to the top, long enough for Google to notice.

And I can’t even blame you. I made that list a follow list. And then I cut back on my posting frequency, with a reduced reader engagement as a result. It’s up for grabs. I know. But you made that clear to me.

I’m quite fed up with you actually.
You and your fellow spammers.

You steal something that’s simply too precious to me. Time and attention. You don’t deserve it, yet you get it. You con me into giving it to you, and in my book that’s stealing.

So I’m closing the gates. The only mention you’ll get is in this post, as your comments have been deleted. The Top Commentators list is now a no-follow list and a comment policy is in place. I require real names now, not keyword heavy grey hat seo follow link names and other rules real people don’t mind (but I know you’ll hate).

Maybe that’ll reduce the amount of comments on this blog, but to be honest…I’d be glad to be rid of you. I prefer quality over quantity everyday.

And as far as Samsonite goes, I love that brand. Just know that I would never buy it through you, or give you the satisfaction that one of my readers would.

Now go on and create something of real value.

Bye now.

This post Dear Mr. Spammer: I have a comment policy now was brought to you by be an original

Yesterday I replied on a comment on this blog and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t even mentioned on this blog the fact that I became a father again. So here it is: on May 15 my wife gave birth to a healthy daughter. Her name is Esmee.

I had announced her birth on Twitter, I even mentioned briefly that we were on the way to the hospital because my wife was going into labor. To which @soniasimone quickly replied that I had to get off of twitter In fact I didn’t see that tweet until after Esmee was born.

Esmee is a little over a month old now, and she’s been giving us a hard time. She cries a lot! And although the start was quite different than with our son, her crying behavior grew into something similar as what we experienced with him. So we’re already working to find out about possible food allergies or intolerances. It’s heartbreaking to see a little baby experiencing so much intestinal discomfort.

But due to this, both my wife and I spend a lot of time and energy comforting her, trying to get her to sleep, struggling to get some sleep ourselves and making sure that our 2 year old son gets enough loving attention too! It took up so much time, that we’re having a hard time doing anything else really. In my spare moments, I try to find a job, connect with people on LinkedIn, write for the blogs or answer my email. Oh…and learn some PHP and MySQL on the side. And I have been thinking a lot lately (what else is there to do when you have to walk around carrying a little one?).

One of the things I hadn’t even mentioned before on this blog, is that I have started writing on a Dutch blog as well. It’s called De InspiratieKamer (The InspirationRoom) and it’s a multi-author blog (there’s 2 of us for now ). The blog is focused on developing creative and presentation skills for people in educational and entrepreneurial organizations. The web presence of De InspiratieKamer at this point is only a blog, but we’re working on expanding De InspiratieKamer to a full set of services, both online and offline.

So if you speak or understand Dutch, please hop on over and take a look! I’d love to hear what you think. And if you like what you see, don’t forget to subscribe to De InspiratieKamer by RSS, email or twitter.

This post In other other news: New baby and Dutch blog was brought to you by be an original

Sometimes it’s hard to start a post. This is one of those posts. I figure that the best I can do is just to start writing and see how the post turns out to be.

I have been missing in action lately. I was missing for a reason, and it was a direct result from a decision I made right after I decided I needed to talk to a lawyer. I needed a lawyer to make sure that my employer, or rather my former employer, was following proper procedure in laying me off. They wanted me out of the company, and they thought we had already agreed upon that. Needless to say, we were in disagreement on that matter. Things weren’t very pleasant and I felt I needed a lawyer to assist me. Without going into detail, the way things evolved only firmed my belief that I made the right choice.

At the same time I knew about the many stories of people blogging or twittering about their job affairs on the internet and all the unwanted side effects to them, and to the companies they worked for. I did not know how things would evolve, but I knew that the potential of saying things I might regret later was a lot higher than usual. Better safe than sorry. So I decided that I would not take part in any online conversations as long as things were not in the clear. They are now, so I can lift that self-imposed restraint.

In short, I’m out of a job.

That sucks big time. Especially in these difficult economic times and with a baby coming within a month. I will have a lot more private time when the baby is born. I would never have been able to spend so much time with my family as I will be able to now. Always look on the bright side!

The past couple of weeks have taken a lot of mental energy from me, as soon as you’re in a conflict that changes the nature of your energy. I thrive on creative energy, and this was not a creative conflict. The conflict has been resolved for almost two weeks now (the paperwork took some time though), and in those two weeks I have been rethinking a lot of things. This is a turning point, and I can now see that the past year was a transition year. Although that insight can only be made in hindsight. There’s much more to be said about that, but that’s for later posts.

I know that the blogging pros say that it’s bad practice to apologize for not writing in a while, or even to mention it in a blog post. I learned a lot from the pros, but that doesn’t mean that I have to mindlessly mimic their opinions in my behavior. This is me explaining why I have been missing in action. And that does not only go for the online world. I have been missing in action for a lot of the offline world as well. I’m not sorry for that, because it was the result of a conscious decision. It does mean that I have to spend some time calling and explaining things to people that have been affected by this decision.

So from now on, I’m no longer MIA.
I’m back, alive and kicking (and looking for a job and other ways to make money).

Photo by fontplaydotcom

This post MIA? No longer was brought to you by be an original

I reviewed Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
by Martin Lindstrom for this month’s theme A Love Affair With Books over on Joyful Jubilant Learning.

Buyology is scary and fascinating at the same time, and it all depends on the mindset with which you read it. Follow this link for the review.

This post Review of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy was brought to you by be an original

Routines are a powerful part of your toolbox. If you want to do something at a regular interval, build a routine that has that activity in it. If you do this well, you’ll never forget it again because the routine will feel incomplete.

Designing routines

One of my routines has been an early morning routine. I woke up at 5am, got out of bed quietly, went downstairs, made coffee, and fired up the laptop to write a blog post.

I often think back at that time, because it was one of the more productive routines I have had in recent times. But I have abandoned that routine, since it did not fit into my context anymore. My early morning routine was very much atuned to the sleeping rhythms of my wife and toddler. The patterns changed and so did my routines.

I haven’t been creating new routines however. In hindsight though, consciously redesigning routines may have been a smart idea.

One of the things that dropped out of my routines was writing blog posts. I found time to write them, but never again in the same rhythm as when I had a steady routine that incorporated them. And then there was another change. We got pregnant again. And my wife’s body is not happy to be pregnant…

Necessary routine emerged

So a new morning routine emerged. A routine where our son will wake us early in the morning, I get him out of bed and take him downstairs, I make breakfast for my wife and she eats it in bed, I make breakfast for my son and myself. Without boring you with all the details…the routine takes me to my day job and is filled with caring for my family. Waking up early has been out of the question for a while, due to irregular sleeping rhythms.

This routine has grown out of necessity, and is very effective in achieving a good start to regular days. Besides being a necessity it also serves one of my core values, Love, since caring for your family to me is a way to shape love in a practical form on a daily basis. It does not serve any of my other goals though, and that thought has been nagging me.

Time to be proactive

It’s time to take control again, to be proactive and start designing new routines. Things are easing up on a family level, my wife (thankfully) is slowly starting to come back to ‘normal life’. At the same time I realize that in a couple of months time, a baby will throw things around again. So being proactive is going to be a major focus.

Starting to write again

I have missed writing on my blog, but it also surprised me how easy it became not to write. I was kind of habitually not writing. And then this feeling emerges that you need to make that comeback with a bang, the killer post. That sure is a reason to procrastinate some more (I’m not the only one dealing with this though).

But that, of course, is hardly a rational thought.
So here it is: I’m back at writing.
I enjoyed it.
I hope you will.

This post Slave to the rhythm was brought to you by be an original

Several weeks ago I wrote the following in one of my weekly reviews:

Quote from Review week 39-2008:
On another note, there are several developments in my life right now. Good developments and very exciting as well, but I can’t break the news just yet. Keep following these updates and you’ll know soon enough. I’ll be setting new goals by then as well.

The next day one of my co-workers enthusiastically asked whether I was going to be a father again… That was NOT what I was thinking about when I wrote it. I meant something entirely different, however…

It was also true! If all goes well, I will be a father again in May next year. And I totally love it! Here’s the first “picture” of the little one:

It was amazing again to see the little one, and if you can tell anything from the images we saw last Friday…this is going to be a lively one as well! He or she was moving around a lot and waving arms and legs. It wondrous to be able to “see inside” and witness your developing child inside the womb. Although Jesse (our son) couldn’t care less, he just wanted to open the door to the hallway again, that’s his newest trick: opening and closing doors.

That was a happy moment for us and we needed it. Pregnancy isn’t always fun you know. My wife is very sick from being pregnant. Imagine morning sickness, only all day long. Eating has lost all its fun, because she needs to eat when nauseous and right after puking her guts out. If she doesn’t it only gets worse. No fun at all.

She’s very thankful and happy to be pregnant again, but she feels awful. She had the same when she was pregnant with Jesse, so it wasn’t really a surprise (although we hoped to skip that part this time around). It stopped at 14 weeks pregnancy then, so if it’s the similar this time she should feel better in about a week from now. I surely hope so!

In the past few weeks, running the household has been my responsibility though. We used to have a 60-40 distribution (yeah, she did more), but now with a 15-85 distribution the weight is primarily on my shoulders. And then there’s some additional care for my wife, especially preparing food and bringing it to her. So I do whatever I can to get us through this part of the pregnancy. But it leaves little time or energy for other things (but that doesn’t stop me from trying…).

The frustrating part is that there’s not an awful lot I can do to make her feel better. All I can do is support her, and help her. When I bring her breakfast in bed for example (which is like every day now), she says “Thank you. Blegh…I’m nauseous. Yuck…I hate that food.” Which is pretty much a mixed message, don’t you think? Am I doing her a favor? Or am I tormenting her with food?

Anyway, I we will be very happy when this phase of the pregnancy is over. So we can enjoy it the rest of the time. And so the distribution in the household can normalize again. Like I said there’s little time and energy left. That doesn’t keep me from working on my ambitions, but it is keeping me from writing about it.

P.S. I have an article published in the current edition (vol 2 ed 2) of “Personal Branding Magazine“, about productivity pitfalls in personal branding. If you want to read it, you need to buy the magazine ($12.95 for 4 editions). And you’ll get interviews with David Allen, Gary Vaynerchuck and others as a bonus

This post New life was brought to you by be an original

This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day 2008. Last year thousands of bloggers joined forces and focused on the Environment. Today the topic is Poverty.

Today I share with you a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The theme of the fairy tale is not poverty, but the context very much is. This story chokes me up every time I read it or see it in the Efteling theme park.

The Little Match Girl – Video (narrated in Dutch)

The Little Match Girl – text version

Translated from Danish by Project Gutenberg

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening—the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.

One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.

She crept along trembling with cold and hunger—a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!

The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year’s Eve; yes, of that she thought.

In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.

Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but—the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.

She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife and fork in its breast, till it came up to the poor little girl; when—the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind. She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant’s house.

Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when—the match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.

“Someone is just dead!” said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God.

She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lustre there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression of love.

“Grandmother!” cried the little one. “Oh, take me with you! You go away when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!” And she rubbed the whole bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety—they were with God.

But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall—frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. “She wanted to warm herself,” people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year.

How you and I can make a difference

All of today’s proceeds of the blog will be donated to Kiva. Kiva is one of the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending websites, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

So if you have been pondering about buying my eBook, the time to act is now! You’ll get the joy of reading my eBook, make me happy to have another reader, and as a bonus you’ll make a big difference in the life of a small entrepreneur in a developing country, working hard to create a better future.

This post The Little Match Girl – Blog Action Day was brought to you by be an original