If it's your anniversary and nobody says anything, did it happen?

As I write this I realize, had I been at my old job I would have celebrated my 30th Anniversary.

It is rare in today's climate to work for a company for more than a decade, let alone two. I almost reached three.

It is rarer still, after 30 years, to leave and not retire.

To survive the old job as long as I did I had to morph, flex, mature, morph, flex and mature some more. I survived some incredibly bad bosses. I had the pleasure of working with some incredibly good ones. I was an average sales rep, grew into an above average revenue producer and built a stellar experience.

I was promoted to supervisor, and soon thereafter to Advertising Sales Manager.

I knew the business inside and out. I knew the community from the west to east. I wore a suit and served on the Board of Directors of the Portland Advertising Federation. I pulled on jeans and served on the Board of Directors of the Clark County Fair.

Near the end, I could have done my job with my eyes closed and slept my way into retirement.

Instead, I left.

I learned something about myself. I learned I was thoughtful yet decisive. For months I considered the move, but I decided the day of one interview

I was willing to give up the world I had known since my early twenties to launch myself into the complete unknown. I was a risk taker. Who leaves a secure job to go work for a start-up? Me, I guess.

Upon arrival at the new port, I had to morph, flex, reflect, and learn while running faster than I could have imagined. I've had the pleasure of meeting incredible people. I've had to say goodbye to other incredible people. I stepped in to fill a hole and received a promotion.

During the first months I would hear myself say, "I can't believe I left."

I don't say that anymore.

A lot of thoughts and baggage gets lost in the hectic pace of how I drive my life, my career and my writing. What doesn't get lost are the people. My calendar 'pop-ups' tell me who's celebrating a birthday and who's celebrating a company anniversary. That may create a phone call, an email, a tweet from me and occasionally a celebration lunch.

Then I sit back and reflect, that on the 29th anniversary, no one said a word.

The day slipped by only recognized by me in the middle of a decision process.

The wordless reception of something significant was not reason to leave. But it was a reason not to stay?

How blogging for 30 days in a row leads to international acclaim

360 Convos rocketed into the international scene with a featured
post on Renbor Sales Solutions' blog, a Toronto, Canada Corp.

When I embarked on my 30 Days of Consecutive Blog Posts I had no idea where I would end up. The disciplined effort to blog everyday led to local, national, and even international attention. One of the places I landed was Toronto, Canada as a featured contributor on The Pipeline, the blog of Renbor Sales Solutions, Inc.

Thank you Tibor Shanto.

People south of Canada tuned in, too. In the last two weeks alone, I received pageviews from 33 of the 50 United States: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, New York.

Do it. Figure out which ones are missing :-)

During that same time, 360 Convos also pulled in viewers from around the world including: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

Some of the posts took on a life of their own and appeared in other places . . .

Dining for Women, a national giving circle empowering women in the developing world, featured the blog post: Can a good dinner change the world?

The City of Gresham picked up a post on customer service for their intranet site, which gave me the opportunity to create the post: City shares good ideas (mine).

The Customer Collective, an “editorially independent, moderated blogging community for elite sales and marketing executives,” featured four posts:

1. Interupted Internet Access Causes Depression
2. Confessions of a Social Media Strategist [A LinkedIn Nightmare?]
3. The Genius of Google +1 vs Retweeting: Casting Your Online Vote
4. Google Analytics Confirm Declines in Website Visits

Porter Anderson, a former CNN journalist, shared his laptop power with me at a Writers Conference, tweeted and emailed a link to 800 other attendees of  Words Motivate.

BlogHer.com, which boasts a following of 23 million women, featured a post I wrote on a visit to the Clark County Fair, Families Disrupted by Technology.

Canadian Sales Trainer Tibor Shanto, a favorite Twitter friend @Renbor, featured one of my posts on his blog: When the customer can't be consoled...

TOP 25. The lovely Paula G, career editor for BlogHer, promoted 360 Convos as one of the 25 Career and Business Women Bloggers Worth Reading.

Today, marks the 38th consecutive post. Don't ask me if I'll keep going. I'm still deciding.

In the meantime, I'd like to quote another Twitter friend, Jeremiah Owyang. He summed up a mutual experience on his blog when he wrote, “Even the smallest thing will lead to something bigger.”

Blogging creates its own form of energy and sends you places you hadn't imagined.

Where has your blog taken you??

38 CONSECUTIVE POST

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If you'd like to read the other posts in the blogging series, try these:

1.

What I learned from Jeremiah Owyang
that allowed me to take down Google*
*Almost

2.

Tips for blogging everyday

3.

Great is the enemy of good and other
things I learned from blogging

4.

How blogging is like throwing stones

5.

How blogging for 30 days in a row
leads to international acclaim

Animals in the backyard, which one would you choose?

Photo by Kailynn Doane

Cotton candy, the hot-buttery smell of popcorn, dusty dry walkways and the screams of death seekers from the carnival rides are the dying embers of memory from summer's county fair.

After the fair closes, other concepts push to the surface: a hutch with rabbits that might fit in the corner of the backyard, a city-size chicken coop on the side of the house, a woolly lamb that might wander over the grass with soft fiber that could be spun into yarn.

County fairs inspire the community to get up close and personal with animals and with youth who devote a 4-H year to animals. Not far from the kids are the parents who drove them to every meeting, Occasionally, parental politics surface during the fair experience -- the parents who want their kids to win over than the lessons learned from participation. The whispers churned up in the aftermath of overbearing parents waft in the corners of every county fair. Back in town, the politics of raising animals within city limits spring up as quickly as the ideas to bring home chickens.

Scratch the llama idea.

If rules and regulations were not an issue, what animal would you bring home from the fair...if you could?

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More stories about the county fair experience here:
Interrupted internet access causes depression

Interrupted internet access causes depression

People deprived of internet access feel upset and lonely according to a recent report on the Daily Mail.



What about people deprived of mothers, fathers and other family members who spend too much time online or on their phones?

For the past four years I served as a Director on the Clark County Fair Board. The second Tuesday of each month my daughter waved goodbye as I toodled off to board meetings. She didn't mind the time I invested, she loved the fair and experienced it herself through 4-H. She even took her Bolognese dog to the Washington State Fair where they won a blue ribbon.

Looking for next step, she became a founding member of the junior fair board. They're like a little start-up, raising funds before the fair and trying to figure out what they can add to the venue that no else is working on. My daughter's role was to create and post signs outside the barns of the day's events. For nine of those days she performed her duties without a co-hort who would make it fun.

She invited me to spend a day with her.

Yesterday, a Friday, I headed to Delfel Road on the outskirts of the county and landed square in the middle of the fair festivities.

Then my iPhone bleated.

Issue at work.

I bent my head over the oblong glass of my thin digital equipment. I tapped out a response. I made a call to clarify. I texted a few more times. I flipped through a few apps and responded to email. Closing in on noon, we stopped for a two-fer at the burger stand and the phone bleated like a new born goat.

By late afternoon, I learned a lesson that had nothing to do with local commerce, animal herdsmanship, fitting and showing, what to buy to have softer skin, or how to prepare quick family meals.

"I thought it would be fun to share the fair with you," complained my teenager. "But you spent the whole time looking at your phone."

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I realized she was right. I even had a kink in my neck.

We began our adventure not on the same page. She had wanted to buy a dream catcher, which we had done, but I thought she had already picked one out and just wanted to show it to me and have me buy it for her. What she really wanted was for the two of us to wander through every booth offering them for sale, discuss the merits of each, and then decide together which one to buy.

She didn't want a credit card, she wanted a day with mommy. And even at almost sixteen she enjoys calling me mommy. I thought taking care of a work issue would allow me to let go of the office and enjoy the day. Simple exchanges and assumptions did not define what her intent was, nor bring clarity to me of what role she wanted me to play.

If interrupted internet access causes depression, what are the results of an interrupted family?