Long post, about 2 printed pages. Those who object to long posts should skip this one.)
Keeping a diary or personal journal is a time-honored activity. The continually-developing internet now gives people the ability to publicly share their entries.
An online diary or journal is called a web log, or blog. Bloggers are people who share their posts. The posts may be written for a small circle of family members and friends, or they may be intended for a larger audience. Blogs can include photos, videos and links to other blogs or web sites.
What does this have to do with expediting? Nothing at all if you do not keep a private journal or public blog, but perhaps something very important if you start.
Not long after Diane and I started expediting in 2003, a fleet owner with many years of experience on the road shared a deep regret with us. He wished that he would have kept a daily journal to help him remember the people he met, places he had been, sights he had seen, challenges he overcame, joys and frustrations he had, and the work he did on the road. With time passing and memories fading, much of what he did is lost to him, simply because he cannot remember.
Journalling and blogging not only helps you remember, it helps you remember accurately. That delicious steak dinner you had where the waitress was a lot of fun, was that in Columbus or Akron? That baseball game we saw the nephews play in, did we drive there in the new truck or the old one? That team we met at that New Hampshire rest area, what were their names again?
Every time a story is pulled from one’s memory and told, the memory is altered a bit. When the story is filed back in the brain, it is the altered version that will be recalled the next time. Putting your experiences and views in writing as they happen locks the memory in, as the written word will be the same twenty years from now as it is today.
Expediters do important work in the world. The freight we haul makes a positive difference in the work and sometimes even the lives of the people we serve. Keeping a journal or blog is a way to affirm the value of the work we do and document the lives we live to do it; even more so if you share you experiences and views in a public blog.
Journals are private. Blogs are public. Just like you don’t say everything about you in church or at a public meeting, you don’t say everything in a blog. Perhaps the best of both worlds is to use a blend of the two, journaling the private stuff and blogging what your online readers will enjoy.
Diane and I are in this for the long haul. With four years of expediting under our belts, we have already assembled a large collection of photos and memories of the road. We plan to haul expedited freight until our health no longer permits it, and then retire with a career to look back on with pride, and with memories to relive as we do so...that is, if we can remember them at all.
To that end, I have been journaling on and off since we started. Recently, I started a public blog. Primitive by today’s standards, I will soon be upgrading the blog portion of my site with state-of-the-art blogware. My blog title is “You Learn Something New Each Day.†Interested readers can see it at:
http://www.successfulexpediters.com/Madsen/MadsenBlog.htm
I gotta tell ya, blogging is fun. It takes very little effort to type out a few words each day and post them. It adds a lot to my day, waking up each morning and looking for something new to learn and share.
Bloggers can title their blogs anything they want and talk about anything they wish. A Trucker Buddy blogger might blog with his or her grade-school class in mind. A grandparent might do a daily blog for their grandchildren, posting clues and playing a game called “Where are Grandma and Grandpa Today?†Someone blogging for their family members might have a blog called “Our Life and Times on the Road.†Someone deeply involved in the expediting industry might run a blog that details what he or she hears on the street about the life and work.
Some bloggers have turned their blogs into lucrative commercial enterprises. While your personal blog does not have to be a for-profit venture, running a hobby blog can have business benefits. For example, a fleet owner might run a personal blog and then refer prospective drivers to it.
That gives drivers the chance to get to know the fleet owner well before they even sign on. It also allows the fleet owner to share the business values and priorities that are important to know. By blogging each day, the fleet owner’s personality and way of doing business would come clear for drivers to read and understand.
While it is relatively new, blogging is an on-fire and sustained phenomenon in American culture and worldwide. All of the major service providers support it (Google, Yahoo! AOL, MSN and more). Part of why blogging is so huge these days is it has become easier and easier to do. By using the free blogware service providers make available, it is almost as easy to begin a blog as it is to open a user account here in the EO Open Forum.
It makes little difference what blogware provider you choose or where on the internet you locate your blog. Today’s blogware makes it very, very easy for bloggers to be found. As your blog content grows, search engines will pick it up and people who are interested in what you write about will find you.
The online world in which bloggers and blog readers participate is called the Blogosphere. Tecnorati, a blogosphere-involved company, reports that over 70 million web logs now exist, with over 120,000 new ones being created every day. The number of blogs has been doubling every five to seven months. While many people start blogs and then abandon them, over half of the blogs remain active. Clearly, people are finding value in blogging. For more, see the reports at: http://www.sifry.com/main.
There is a lot more to blogging and its social implications and professional networking opportunities than I will go into here. Some bloggers have turned their blog sites into very important places for people in their social circles or industries or political camps to visit. For expediters who wish to do little more than share their experiences and views, document the same for their own future reference, and meet and interact with like-minded people, blogging can be a productive and fun activity.
I recently spent a full day reading other people’s blogs. While hundreds, perhaps thousands, of truck drivers have blogs, very few expediters do. I encourage all expediters to consider blogging. It is a worthy activity that can enrich your expediting experiences in more ways than one.
Keeping a diary or personal journal is a time-honored activity. The continually-developing internet now gives people the ability to publicly share their entries.
An online diary or journal is called a web log, or blog. Bloggers are people who share their posts. The posts may be written for a small circle of family members and friends, or they may be intended for a larger audience. Blogs can include photos, videos and links to other blogs or web sites.
What does this have to do with expediting? Nothing at all if you do not keep a private journal or public blog, but perhaps something very important if you start.
Not long after Diane and I started expediting in 2003, a fleet owner with many years of experience on the road shared a deep regret with us. He wished that he would have kept a daily journal to help him remember the people he met, places he had been, sights he had seen, challenges he overcame, joys and frustrations he had, and the work he did on the road. With time passing and memories fading, much of what he did is lost to him, simply because he cannot remember.
Journalling and blogging not only helps you remember, it helps you remember accurately. That delicious steak dinner you had where the waitress was a lot of fun, was that in Columbus or Akron? That baseball game we saw the nephews play in, did we drive there in the new truck or the old one? That team we met at that New Hampshire rest area, what were their names again?
Every time a story is pulled from one’s memory and told, the memory is altered a bit. When the story is filed back in the brain, it is the altered version that will be recalled the next time. Putting your experiences and views in writing as they happen locks the memory in, as the written word will be the same twenty years from now as it is today.
Expediters do important work in the world. The freight we haul makes a positive difference in the work and sometimes even the lives of the people we serve. Keeping a journal or blog is a way to affirm the value of the work we do and document the lives we live to do it; even more so if you share you experiences and views in a public blog.
Journals are private. Blogs are public. Just like you don’t say everything about you in church or at a public meeting, you don’t say everything in a blog. Perhaps the best of both worlds is to use a blend of the two, journaling the private stuff and blogging what your online readers will enjoy.
Diane and I are in this for the long haul. With four years of expediting under our belts, we have already assembled a large collection of photos and memories of the road. We plan to haul expedited freight until our health no longer permits it, and then retire with a career to look back on with pride, and with memories to relive as we do so...that is, if we can remember them at all.
To that end, I have been journaling on and off since we started. Recently, I started a public blog. Primitive by today’s standards, I will soon be upgrading the blog portion of my site with state-of-the-art blogware. My blog title is “You Learn Something New Each Day.†Interested readers can see it at:
http://www.successfulexpediters.com/Madsen/MadsenBlog.htm
I gotta tell ya, blogging is fun. It takes very little effort to type out a few words each day and post them. It adds a lot to my day, waking up each morning and looking for something new to learn and share.
Bloggers can title their blogs anything they want and talk about anything they wish. A Trucker Buddy blogger might blog with his or her grade-school class in mind. A grandparent might do a daily blog for their grandchildren, posting clues and playing a game called “Where are Grandma and Grandpa Today?†Someone blogging for their family members might have a blog called “Our Life and Times on the Road.†Someone deeply involved in the expediting industry might run a blog that details what he or she hears on the street about the life and work.
Some bloggers have turned their blogs into lucrative commercial enterprises. While your personal blog does not have to be a for-profit venture, running a hobby blog can have business benefits. For example, a fleet owner might run a personal blog and then refer prospective drivers to it.
That gives drivers the chance to get to know the fleet owner well before they even sign on. It also allows the fleet owner to share the business values and priorities that are important to know. By blogging each day, the fleet owner’s personality and way of doing business would come clear for drivers to read and understand.
While it is relatively new, blogging is an on-fire and sustained phenomenon in American culture and worldwide. All of the major service providers support it (Google, Yahoo! AOL, MSN and more). Part of why blogging is so huge these days is it has become easier and easier to do. By using the free blogware service providers make available, it is almost as easy to begin a blog as it is to open a user account here in the EO Open Forum.
It makes little difference what blogware provider you choose or where on the internet you locate your blog. Today’s blogware makes it very, very easy for bloggers to be found. As your blog content grows, search engines will pick it up and people who are interested in what you write about will find you.
The online world in which bloggers and blog readers participate is called the Blogosphere. Tecnorati, a blogosphere-involved company, reports that over 70 million web logs now exist, with over 120,000 new ones being created every day. The number of blogs has been doubling every five to seven months. While many people start blogs and then abandon them, over half of the blogs remain active. Clearly, people are finding value in blogging. For more, see the reports at: http://www.sifry.com/main.
There is a lot more to blogging and its social implications and professional networking opportunities than I will go into here. Some bloggers have turned their blog sites into very important places for people in their social circles or industries or political camps to visit. For expediters who wish to do little more than share their experiences and views, document the same for their own future reference, and meet and interact with like-minded people, blogging can be a productive and fun activity.
I recently spent a full day reading other people’s blogs. While hundreds, perhaps thousands, of truck drivers have blogs, very few expediters do. I encourage all expediters to consider blogging. It is a worthy activity that can enrich your expediting experiences in more ways than one.
