I know you probably don’t really want to hear it, but here it is anyway.

About two months ago - which is when I stopped blogging, I found out that as part of the bible college I attend I had the opportunity to travel to Cambodia as part of a missions trip - which cost about $2000. So I had about 5 weeks to save $2000, which meant a lot of hard work and long hours at my job. Obviously this took me away from my blogging and my computer in general. I was so busy the 4 weeks after that, that I barely even turned my computer on. In fact when I finally did I had over 5000 new emails (about 4950 we spam!)

But the time off gave me time to think. I had been in a bit of a rut with life and my online ventures - both going nowhere. My passion for making money on the internet was fading - and during the time off I honestly thought I would never go back to blogging or internet marketing.

However when I arrived I Cambodia, it impacted me so much. The poverty that most of the people live in is sickening, and I realised how blessed we are to have what we do. One of the things we did as part of our missions trip was to help at a church planting school and it was interesting to find that one of the key things they taught their students was business.

I guess the thing that brought my passion for business and internet marketing back was the second last day of my trip. The founder of Metamorphic (The group we were traveling with) invited us to a lunch with him and one of his board members - which happened to be a very senior member of Oracle and on their international board. this man had the opportunity to share with us and one of the things he said was  that although he admired all the missionaries in the world he could never be one - he was created for business, it was what made him tick, it was what he was good at and it allowed him to make and impact in the world (he is able to give substantial  amounts of money to different charities).

I guess it’s not that much. But I guess it kind reignited the passion and since then the ideas have been ticking over at a fast rate and I have a few projects on the way.

A few other things that have happened in the last 2 months while I was gone is that I found out that my grandmother has terminal cancer, and she has been deteriorating rapidly, which has had a huge impact on my family especially my mum. It is sad to see her not being able to eat properly or move, and although she has live a long and eventful life it just shows me how fragile life really is.

But one positive thing that has happened recently is that I now have an amazing girlfriend which I guess could also be a reason I haven’t had much time to do anything online.

Maybe not the best excuse, but it’s the truth. I look forward to being back and growing this blog and my other ventures. Hopefully I will prioritize my time so that I can.

Today I decided to do something that I have never done before. Something I have wanted to do for ages but to be honest was a little bit scared and didn’t want to do it alone.

I Gave Blood!

My friend and I were driving past the Red Cross van yesterday but they were closed so we promised ourselves to come back today and we did. I was a little bit worried that they wouldn’t accept me as I was diagnosed with Anemia early last year and there was a Iron level test that I had to pass before they would accept me - I passed with flying colours.

So here I was laying on the chair - my friend and gone before me and he got through fine, so I wasn’t stressing that much. The lady taking my blood asked me which arm to stick the needle in and me being logical said ‘my left arm, because I am right handed’ (my sister later told me this was a bad choice - she works in a medical lab). They stick the needle in my arm but the blood doesn’t really flow as good as they expected, so they fiddle with the needle - stabbing me each time.

Coming to the conclusion that they need to use my other arm, they proceed to stick the needle in my right arm and everything starts proceeding smoothly. I got told that if I started feeling faint all I had to do was tell them but everything was going good - until it was all over and they took the needle out!

As soon as they took the needle out, I started blacking out. Straight away I tell the lady ‘I think I am going to faint’ and she lays me down, telling me to keep my eyes open and breathe. It was such a weird feeling I have never passed out before and hope I never do after that - my friend told me that I went so white (which is an effort for me, as I have olive skin) and I just laid there for about 10 minutes.

Everything turned out fine, and I was just out of it for the next couple of hours. But when I think of how what I did has the possibility of saving someones life, I would gladly go through all of that again - and I will be in three months time. I strongly recommend that you take the time to donate some blood. I don’t know about where you all live but in Australia blood levels are really low and anything we can do to help we should.

Sorry about the personal post, but it is the major thing that happened to me today. This will be my last post before I leave on Monday morning (Saturday night here), I have timestamped 2 of the guest posts (still waiting on 1 - maybe 2 more) to start on Monday morning and I would love you to warmly accept the posts and give the authors a kind reception! I will be back Friday!

Over the last couple of days my work future has become a little uncertain.

My boss is looking at selling his current franchise to more onto something else, and to be quite honest if he does, then I won’t want to stay - and if he asks me to go with him, I don’t think I will.

I feel like a change, but I am not sure how to handle it.

In all honestly I would love to focus on internet marketing full time. But at the moment I don’t have the results to back myself up when it comes to explaining to my parents that I want to be a full-time internet marketer.

So over the next couple of months I really need to bump up my online workload to build my online ventures to a level that I can live off.

I don’t need anything flash, I live at home and am pretty frugal when it comes to spending money, but I want to be making some money before I finish up my current job.

And in all honestly, I really don’t want another job. I hate the idea of working for someone else, and will ever be truly happy while I am.

So keep watching this space as I use this as a motivation to take things up a notch. And if you havn’t already subscribed to my rss feed than now is the time - you will not want to miss the next couple of months of my online journey.

I just got back from a camping trip that I went to with all the men from my church.  It was a great weekend, and I really enjoyed taking the time to just relax and have some fun.

One of the highlights of the weekend was when we went hiking up a mountain. The idea of the hike was to get people thinking about how to overcome mountains or obstacles in your life, and  I had a few thoughts that could be related back to blogging.

1. Focus on the End Result

As we were walking up the mountain there were a lot of times when we couldn’t even see where the top of the mountain was, and since we could not see the end destination a few of the guys started getting discouraged. But the thing is we knew what the end result was, when we got to the top we would have an amazing 360 degree view, but those with a lack of vision started to talk about giving up.

With blogging set some goals, whether it is your rss feed count, or number of visitors per day, or even how much per month your are wanting to earn. If you focus on the end result it is so much easier to get through the hard times.
2. Don’t Journey Alone

So many people try to do things by themselves. But if they do, who is there to pick them up when the fall or convince them to keep going when there are the thoughts to give up?

As we were hiking up the mountain I took the time to chat with my pastor and we were just talking about anything from blogging to planting churches in Switzerland,  but the thing was that we got shocked when we hit the halfway point. Why? Because since we had been talking, our focus had been off of the obstacle of the mountain, and we had not even had one thought about how far up the mountain we were.

Keep people around you as you blog, build relationships with other bloggers and continually encourage them. Take the journey together, because not only will you enjoy the company on the way, but you will have someone to celebrate with when you reach your goals.

There will always be mountains or obstacles that will try and stop you from achieving your goals, will you let them win or will you see them as opportunities to make yourself stronger?