December 19th, 2012
Time for a break! In all honesty, I have already been on a break from blogging (which has been nice for me…and maybe you as well?!), but it is time for my annual break from all things social media. I am going off line starting this Friday, December 21st and will be back on Monday, January 21st. No Facebook, or Twitter or Google+ or Instagram or any of that other silly stuff. There will be an end of the year e-mail going out, but other than that, I am unplugging.
December and January are fairly quiet months for me anyway, so it is usually a good time to step back, reflect and reload. 2012 was a good year and I am hopeful that 2013 will be even better, and I am working on ways to further support diversity and inclusion efforts. I want to throw more rocks this coming year, I want to instigate more, provoke more…and I am trying to figure out how that happens.
I hope happy and healthy holidays for you and yours, and I want to leave you with a few quotes that have been kicking around in my head lately:
If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.
-Emile Zola
I am a part of all that I have met.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
Justice is what love looks like in public. When you love folk you will hate the fact that they are being treated unjustly.
-Cornel West
By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before.
-Edwin Elliot
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today. Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every other pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Enjoy those thoughts. Or not.
I love you like a hog loves slop, but its time for me to go quiet for a bit. See you next year.
Be good to each other.
Your wit and insight will be missed but we will strive to survive.
Gather those rocks, Joe. Come back refreshed, recharged, and ready to poke, prod, make the bold statements, ask the tough questions, and inspire. Cheers!