8/12

8/12 is the date my wife suggested I start blogging. I've tried for years to keep a written journal. Just about every page is a new entry two or three or six months later than the previous one with the opening line, "Today, I'm really going to start doing this everyday!"... or a some variation of that empty promise. We've attended the Willow Creek Leadership Summit together yesterday and today. We saw and heard some pretty amazing speakers and leaders; Len Schlesinger, Cory Booker, Seth Godin, Michelle Rhee and Mama Maggie Groban among them.

Seth Godin, in his hilarious and great speech, made a point about true innovators never waiting for permission to do something. They just did it. They never stood on the playground waiting for someone to pick them for their team. they picked themselves. That the true innovators and pioneers didn't wait to be guaranteed payment or fame to do what they wanted to do. They did what they were great at because (I'm paraphrasing) they just couldn't help it. He said if you want to sing- sing! YouTube was a great microphone. If you want to write- write! Don't worry about not making money or not being published. As Jim Collins said at last years summit, get on the bus and just go. Don't worry about where you're going.

So today, I'm getting on the blog bus because my wife told me to. Not that she ordered me to but because she knew it would be something I would love to do and it could serve as record for my children of a journey I think began today, at about 10:45a, on 8/12/2011, after I wrote a promise to myself on a piece of broken clay. While I'm not going to profess to having "seen the light" or having been knocked from my horse like Paul, but after hearing Michelle Rhee speak of her courage to stand up for children in a crappy school system and listening to a selfless angelic-like Mama Maggie Grobin describe looking into the faces of children in the slums of Cairo and seeing God- something happened.I started to fall apart and I started to sob. I fought like hell to keep it in and I did. But one thing was painfully clear to me- I had to do... "sumthin"...