Being it is Thursday, I do have an official Thanksgiving Day posting up at Say “Alaka‘i” today, which is called Growing up with our Thanksgiving Mahalo, and I invite you to join the discussion there if you care to.
However no duplication on Talking Story today: This is a day I wanted to keep it more personal here on our mothership, less management-teachy, so I could simply say Mahalo to you as directly as I can. Thank you.
Thank you for reading, and for being here. Thank you for commenting when you do, and for sharing my writing with others. Thank you for trying out those things I suggest to you as we learn together, pursuing our mission to reinvent our workplaces for the better, value by value.
Thank you for being the ones who have stuck with me through all my seemingly selfish experimentation as I dropped my value of the month program, stopped sending my email newsletters, and began to fully play online instead, adding different sites too numerous to keep track of and expecting you’d make the web-based adjustments too, regardless of any workplace firewall standing in our way. Thank you for following my links, checking out my Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr, and now, Ruzuku.
I cannot quite explain why blogging nurtures me in the way it does, even during those times when any business conversion from it slows to a mere trickle. I know I write to think, and to clarify what I myself feel I need to learn, but there is more to it than that, a more to it that includes you: It is very important to me that you are here, and that someone else is reading all of this… as I said, I can’t really explain it, but it just is. I know it helps us thrive in the way we learn, and thus, in the way we continue to grow and prosper.
So I like to think it is good for both of us, a healthy win-win within our ever-evolving web-based ecosystem of human exploration. Like Aloha itself, it just is, and need not be explained much more than that.
Ultimately, is it all about business still? I guess so, for all of my Ho‘ohana Publishing remains rooted in that reason for being, and for being birthed in the first place. I believe that business endeavors continue to hold much promise for us and our ‘Imi ola (best possible life), and we need not apologize for them, or shy away from them. However our relationships have flowed from those first rootings in many different ways, blooming within the Aloha and Ho‘ohana we share, and I am profoundly grateful for all of them.
On this Thanksgiving Day, please know how very much I appreciate you, and wish you every blessing.
Mahalo nui loa,
I think Thanksgiving is a wonderful celebration I wish we could transfer to Australia. I’m thankful too for all you’ve sown into my life over the past few years Rosa. (Still think your Book is a must for managers everywhere)
.-= ´s last blog ..ACFE Award Winner =-.
Mahalo nui loa Pete, thank you so much. You’ve given me the tasty pleasure of a dessert-rich sweetness before I even get to my Thanksgiving Day meal today, and this one I can savor for much longer (without it going to my hips :)
Rosa, thank you for these lovely words, and I hope you had a wonderful day. I’ve so enjoyed some of the feeling of Thanksgiving through my American friiends over the last couple of years – without the stress of having to cook a big dinner!
I just wanted to add one thought about blogging. I was thinking about our writing to learn theme the other day and realised that a big, huge, part of the learning comes when we decide to share our writing, even the writing that is of an exploratory and journal type nature. This would have been unlikely and maybe even impossible in days gone by… do you think?
The act of sharing changes something inside us, opens something up, allows room for possibility. The act of reading what others have shared changes something in a similar way.
And when we exchange words in the comment boxes… well that’s when the real magic occurs :-)
Aloha Joanna, yes, I do think the sharing is important, for it reveals so much clarity, first in our having to be more thoughtful versus impulsive and self-editing before we hit that publish button, and then to field those reactions – sometimes quite different than we ever expected them to be!
As writers and coaches we certainly are very blessed that blogging and other publishing options are part of our day and time – I too have thought about that often and marveled at it.
Hi Rosa,
What a lovely post!
We went to our first ever Thanksgiving yesterday and it was great. At the end of the night everyone had to write down two things they were thankful for (one serious, one light hearted), which were then read out. There’s a lot we have to be thankful for indeed!
Happy Thanksgiving to you too Rosa :)
All my best
Paul
.-= ´s last blog ..Café Culture Careers =-.
Good morning Paul! I have heard from other international friends about plans to have a first or second Thanksgiving meal this year, and think it is a fabulous delivery for 2009 to make for us all.
Many of us have those round-the-table memories of our early Thanksgivings, with parents forcing us as children to state something we were grateful for, and I mentioned it in my Say “Alaka‘i” article as a memory most are not too fond of… a lot of eye rolling and soft groaning would happen with all parents universally ignoring them and pressing on. I mentioned it as a similar preface with us still pressing on and giving thanks within our workplaces too, for I think we appreciate the practice and the careful reflection so much more as we get older.
I am so glad to hear your family found your first Thanksgiving to be such a good experience!