Celebrating One Year at Systems-Overload

"cupcake" courtesy of nazreth

Today marks one year at the Systems-Overload Blog, so I thought that I’d take a few moments to celebrate. I hope that you’ll join me.

It all started with Welcome and GTD Overview posts back in September 2007. I had been reading a few blogs regularly for a few months and I thought that I would give it a try. I had been doing the DC Heron Family Blog for almost one year at that point and had found myself interested in writing about topics that didn’t quite seem to fit with the family blog. While trying to come up with some ideas about dealing with email, I stumbled upon GTD (Getting Things Done). I thought that if I had struggled with email and wanting to get things done that other might be in similar enough situations and like to join me on my journey.

While I do post a lot of pieces related to productivity, I realize that life doesn’t occur in a vacuum and that only writing about productivity, by itself, would have been too narrow a topic. So, when deciding to do the blog, I thought that I would also write about some other topics that many of my audience could relate to like parenting, health, finances, and so on. Today’s world is very complicated and many of us could benefit from reading how other people have dealt with some of the same problems and issues that we’re dealing with or maybe it is helpful to get ideas from others that you can incorporate into your life and adopt as your own. You hear all the time about how the future is going to be more and more about collaboration.

I have enjoyed this past year and am glad that I decided to start Systems-Overload. I’m pleased to have participated in the 2007 Blog Action Day and look forward to contributing to the cause this year. January 2008 was National Mentoring Month and I wrote be a mentor as part of my awareness efforts. I participated in Earth Day 2008. I did an interview of Leo Babauta, the man behind popular simplicity blog, Zenhabits. I was excited to reach the 100 post milestone in August.

Like most everything that you do in this life you’ll find that you plan and then life happens, sometimes changing your plans and sometimes delaying the timing of your plans. Shortly after starting the blog, my father had a heart attack and I flew back home to be with him and my family there as he had by-pass surgery. I’m glad to report that he recovered very well and was able to visit us in Germany this past Summer. My father’s heart attack and surgery was the inspiration for Heart Check. In May I started working on a new project that has often needed that extra time and effort that have slowed down my posts upon several occasions. I did fly to Copenhagen for a client visit and internal workshop back in June, which was my first visit to city of Hans Christian Anderson. I plan to post some pictures of Copenhagen to my Flickr account in the near future. Also in May, we had a terrible fire in the garden hut in our backyard. We were fortunate that nobody was injured and that the damage was not worse than it was. Certainly, I realized that it must be very traumatic to have a serious fire in your house, but now I can relate more to that personal tragedy that has been experienced by those people that have had serious fires in their house. The fire that we had at 3 am that awful morning in May was an adrenalin raising experience that I don’t wish on anyone. I have spent a great deal of time cleaning up and trying to restore some sense of order to our backyard since (I wrote about the progress that has been made here and have posted several pictures of the fire damage and work in a photo album @ Myspace). In July I spent a week in Amsterdam attending a week long training session. For the Seventh Anniversary of September Eleventh, I wrote a post at the DC Heron Blog about David Laychak as part of Project 2996. I have a personal connection to September Eleventh, as my mother lost her battle to cancer while much of the world saw the two planes hitting the World Trade Center.

When I started the blog, I did a brainstorming session about post that I thought that I’d write about and surprisingly enough, many of those ideas are still waiting for me to write about them. I know that some of them might not be relevant any longer, so I’ll need to review the list again, but it is encouraging to know that I haven’t had writers’ block in terms of post ideas! I’m working on my part of the 2008 Blog Action Day, in addition to planning the launch of a project that I started about a year ago. I’m looking forward to the second year of Systems-Overload.

Feedback and comments from readers are always welcome, but even more so on an occasion like this. I’d love to hear what I have done that has been well received. I’d like to know what I could or should do differently. Are there any topics or things that you would like me to write about? I’d love to hear from you.

Blogged with the Flock Browser