I just wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! The year is coming to an end, we’re still alive and the planet seems to be doing fine.

Hug the person beside you and tell them that you appreciate them. You don’t need to be Christian to do this and that’s all that Christmas is about. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t receive a lot of gifts or if you couldn’t afford to give a gift to someone that you care for.

Christmas is not about going broke to show people that you love them. A hug is free and it does more for the soul than a useless piece of junk that will take space in your house for years to come.

Have a great day today and don’t forget to reflect on your plans for 2013. Plan it well and make it the best year yet. If God keeps me, I’ll be there by your side making the best of it. Let’s do it together!

The year 2013 can be amazing.

What’s your plan for 2013?

Have you started working on it?

The other I was sitting at home thinking about what I could do for this world that would bring joy to people, make them smile, motivate and inspire them. I came up with a few ideas that I decided to discard for now but I decided to act on one of them.

The idea I decided to act on is quite simple but I think that it could achieve the goal that I’ve set for it and set the stage for more positive stuff like a scholarship fund in the future.

The idea I came up is to launch a new blog that would be a zillion percent positive. On this blog I wouldn’t talk about web design, hosting, search engine optimization or real estate. The blog’s soul  purpose would be to post positive content from other sources and positive content that I come up with.

Once in a while I come up with an original quote and I usually post those on Facebook, Twitter or on one of my notebooks. This new blog would be a good avenue for me to post things like that and share them with the world.

I also come across a lot of images and videos that are really inspiring while browsing the web and I’ll bookmark the ones that I really like or save the images on a folder on my Dropbox folders. It allows me to go back and take a look at them when I want to but without sharing them I feel a little selfish because I know that some of these images, videos and quotes could impact a lot of people in a positive way. By having a central home for this kind of content I think it could be very interesting to see what can come out of it.

I asked my wife and some of my friends on Facebook for ideas for names and I’ll match these names with some of the things that I come up with and see if I can find a good name that makes sense. If I do, a new blog will be launched shortly.

I’ve established a few rules for the blog already so that I would protect it from myself and some of my business ideas.

The basic rules are that I wouldn’t spend more than 30 per day working on it. It means that the design will be very simple and the programming will be equally straight forward.

The second rule has to do with self promotion. I will not use the blog as a vehicle for self promotion. This means that it won’t be a place for me to sell my services and show off my skills. I might include my name or a link to one of my websites but if I do it will be very subtle and won’t get in the way of the goal of the website which will always be to motivate, inspire and make people smile by sharing creative videos, images and words available on the Internet.

I might also make it possible for others to post on the blog as well if they are able to respect these rules but that’s something that I still have to think about.

For now all I know is that this project is dear to me and I’m determined to make it come to life in the near future.

If you’d like to get involved in this project contact me to discuss.

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t wrote anything on my back for a while. In fact, I don’t even remember when the last time I wrote here but I know that it’s been a while.

I took a Social Media Retirement. I believe that it lasted about a year and it was a great way for me to clear my mind from all the noise and avoid becoming a Internet polluter.

There is a lot of waste online and we’re leaving in an Information Overload Era. I certainly didn’t want to take part in this massive content creation culture simply for the sake of creating content online.

During my break I also went back to some of my real passions that didn’t include blogging and creating websites. Some of them have to do with identifying issues, problem solving, real estate, reading, teaching and learning. That’s not the kind of things that I felt like blogging about. I just felt like doing them.

I didn’t have a Facebook account (I reactivated it a few weeks ago) and minimized my Twitter usage. It forced me to live the moments as they were happening and fully concentrate on my work (including connecting with people on a more personal level).

I went over a lot of the blog posts that I’ve written over the years and some of what I wrote on my Facebook and Twitter account. It taught me a lot about myself and validated some of my positive and negative results. It’s a challenge to measure something while you’re doing it. My Social Media Retirement helped me to focus on different strategies to reach my goals and discover who I was in this crowded world of virtual social butterflies.

I also got rid of many of my fears, overcame a few things that were holding me back and had an impact on a few people along the way. I redesigned myself, my relationships, my skills, upgraded my lifestyle and finally found inner peace.

I don’t have any specific takeaways for you today. I just wanted to let you know that you’ll gradually start seeing more of my work online and offline because I’m back from my social media hiatus.

In 2013, it’s all about give back and using my time and skills to help others find and achieve their dreams.

If you’re working on anything (personal or professional) that you’d like to talk about, don’t hesitate to be in touch.

“For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.” Gotthold Ephraim Lessing