After a busy weekend and an early start to Monday, I sat with my morning latte for a few moments listening to a podcast by brilliant American author Seth Godin.  Among a few points where he mentions taking responsibility for the moment and embracing the opportunities in front of us rather than waiting for a perfect ideal to come along, he also points to the power of blogging:

"I think everyone should do so and here's why: If you know that tomorrow you have to say something about something you noticed, about something that might help someone else, about an opinion you have that might stand the test of time, you will form those opinions, you will noticed those things you will invent that idea. And if day after day, week after week, you leave this trail behind of thoughtful examination of your world you can't help but get better at whatever it is you seek to do. And if as a by-product other people read it and trust you more, that's a jackpot, right?"

Aside from this excerpt making me feel incredibly great about myself, being that I'm in my 6th week of daily blogging now, it also pointed out one of the fundamental reasons why this exercise is incredibly important.

Without the ability to connect with people, there is no value in anything we do. Just like the value of your car or your home, its value is simply whatever the next person is willing to give for it.  AND when people give us their attention, it is actually worth more than their car or their home as it is infinite in its possibilities.

I feel like this is something we all understood when we were young, the thrill of creating a fake newspaper and having your parents read it, of performing a song in the living room or making your parents play through a game you and your sister just created. Having the attention of other people was thrilling simply by the virtue of them giving it to you for something that you earned.

The daily part of the blog is valuable as they won't all be great, but some of them sure will!  It is only by looking back over the month where I can separate the champions from the pretenders, but until they are written you will have no way to know (just like songwriting, play-writing, or working in whatever field you are familiar with.)

So just before we send off 2015, we had one more song up our sleeve. This one is called “Burning Wings”. I’m a huge fan of Seth Godin and the concepts behind his book “The Icarus Deception” are where I drew most of the inspiration for this song. A lot of us could use a little less space between us and the sun. You know you’re alive when you have some fires to put out - most notably on your wax wings.