Welcome to My Blog.

As some of you know, I've wanted to start a blog for over a year. Here I am, finally writing my first entry. It took this long because I never knew what would interest someone else enough to read my blog - but I had an interesting epiphany today that inspired me to actually sit down and get started.

I was at Sneakers Pub last night talking to my friend Steven. I started talking about this lunch meeting that I had on Friday with a photographer named Jim that my company uses (check out http://www.haefnerphoto.com/, his work is incredible). I mentioned to Steven that every time I get an opportunity to work with Jim, I feel like I get to take home a treasure box full of new information, because he is one of those people who are very passionate about sharing the interesting things he knows.

People like Jim, who have been everywhere and are naturally eager to share interesting facts about art and photography, good business practices, different cultures, and places others may never get to visit, are so valuable in our lives. After our lunch I thought to myself, I can only hope that someday I will acquire experience and knowledge that I can share with someone and be able to inspire them in a similar way.

Today I was reading the paper at Starbucks and absorbing information and I started thinking about how important it is to read the paper and stay in touch with the happenings around me. Somewhere in that train of thought, I came to the conclusion that although I may not have as much life experience and knowledge as my colleague Jim, I still go to sleep each night with something new that I did not have when I woke up that morning, because we all truly do learn something new every day.

I also realized that I sometimes take this for granted by not even recognizing that I learned anything at all. So I thought, why not create my blog as a reflection of that one important thing that I learn each day, and also have the opportunity to pass along that thing to others?

I think it would be awesome too if anyone who reads my blog would comment back and share the one important thing they learned too. If this became an interactive blog, we could all be that much more knowledgeable about the world. :)

So, what did I learn today? Some great statistics about the city I live in. I was very interested to read in the Detroit Free Press that the economy in downtown Ferndale is literally booming. I had no idea that my city acquired 26 new businesses and created 290 new jobs in 2008. Public and private investments into downtown Ferndale also rose last year, by 300 percent! It was really nice to read a story about success while we're all being suffocated by the gloom and doom that's everywhere around us - and I thought I would share.