Today is a holiday so I am going to steal a pocket of time to post (I usually post on the weekends). Why? It is also the one month anniversary of happyconnected.
I see an anniversary as a time to reflect. It is an opportunity to give thanks to all the good fortunes that helped me get to where I am (whether it is a company like WordPress for having a user friendly product (I struggled two weeks with another company and terminated the account with them before arriving at WordPress)), to the people around me who remained patient as I became completely immersed, to pat myself on the back for working consistently and figuring how I can keep that momentum.
The idea of blogging materialized when I was traveling in Europe in early fall. I was on a plane and the passenger sitting next to me asked about my Android phone and whether I like it. And that’s when I told him some of the apps that are quite helpful to have. They are Springpad, Astrid, Thinking Space/Mindjet. He tells me that since I seem to be this excited about the products, that I should write a book or teach a class. He was actually the third person that told me this. Once when I told a friend about what apps to download, he asked me if I have a blog he can follow. My brother had also asked me to be a coach to help people improve their productivity with their phones.
I happen to bring my very first journal entry (made in August 2002) with me on that trip. The entry was a little bit shy of ten years plus one month.
In reviewing my entries from ten years ago, I was writing to understand myself more. Now that I am a little bit more aware of who I am, insight can be arrived at much quicker and resolution more immediate. Therefore, I’d like to write to share my experience and what I learn from others. I can’t tell you how many times I reread The Happiness Project by Gretchin Rubin or David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Those books help me see the world a little bit differently and give me some wisdom to make my world a little bit more manageable, and a happier person. So, I am passing forward.
As I was traveling, I scribbled onto my pages the various forms/uses for the blog. And on October 2nd, at the hotel room in Amsterdam, as I was trying to find connections for my laptop and my phone, the concept of “happyconnected” came to bear. I realized at that juncture that I was enjoying my trip because I was connected! That having my phone and my laptop helped me make better choices, that being disconnected caused me more anxiety. I went on go-daddy to see if the account was available and it sure was. And then I registered happyconnected at WordPress on October 12th.
I initially struggled with figuring out what to put on the site, the pages and the posts themselves. The relevant content became apparent when my fiance and I started planning our wedding so that there would be an example of a process to share. I asked my fiance if I can post about our wedding planning experience using Springpad and he agreed to use the app with me. That weekend, I posted our experience researching a location for a home wedding and looking for inspirations.
I should say though that another important catalysis for a blog, besides content, was finding a template that I like and that the work product looked decent enough. Never under-estimate the “pretty factor.” I recognized that when I was trying to differentiate between Springpad vs. Pinterest in my recent post. The bottom line is, if what you’re working with or creating is aesthetically pleasing, you want to work more, interact with it more, create more. This is very important for a minimalist like myself who focuses on functions. After all, it was this pretty factor and content that I am writing at 8:30 AM on a holiday.
happyconnected 
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