I have about 10 blog posts here in draft form, things I’ve written because I just needed to get them out of my system, but things I’m not sure are ready for prime time, so to speak.
The problem with being elected to office- even a small local office, is that I feel I’m on stage more of the time. When I asked a group about how they got their news, one of them remarked they just checked out my Facebook page. While that’s great on many levels, it does make me think more about the impact of my posts and that there are always potential consequences to being as freewheeling as I have been in the past.
The current President and his twitter habits have made it painfully clear that taking to social media any time you have a petty disagreement or frustration can lead into dangerous territory. It’s something we should all think about a bit more. Finding the balance between unleashed Id and honest communication can be a challenge, especially for those of us who are writers by nature.
It’s Fall here in Southern Chester County- While it’s a few weeks before we finally feel a chill in the air and see leaves start to change, the quiet of having the kids back in college is starting to sink in, and the peace gives me more time to think.
I love my community. It’s full of people who care about each other, care about how to preserve what’s best in our community, and how to make changes that help us grow and be even better. Balancing growth and maintaining the things that make our community special isn’t easy. People are suspicious of change, but we need a bit of oxygen in order to keep things vibrant and alive.
One of the things we started a while ago was a project we call “Office Hours”. It was meant to be a bit of a stripped down business-oriented podcamp- with presentations that are about sharing information businesses need to know- social media trends, legal issues, banking opportunities that can save money- all the little things we’re supposed to keep up on, but that can get overwhelming.
From my point of view, this was meant as a light weight way to try economic development. It’s meant to support small business owners, and people considering opening up their own businesses, by providing that information you might not think about, but learning for an hour over breakfast or drinks is a decent investment of time and effort. It’s also let small business owners get together and meet each other, and that’s helped to draw our community together as well.
I look at many of these things as experimental- something to try, and if does well, we’ll do more. If it doesn’t, we’ll try something else instead. So far, between Office Hours and the Holiday Village, our experiments are continuing, in large part because people like them and want more things like this in the community- events, opportunities to get together, and exchanges of ideas that come from a place of giving, and finding ways to work together towards something bigger.
There are tons of ideas out there like this, and I love hearing about them all. Please comment, share your ideas, and together, we make communities all over better, one small experiment at a time.