What You Can Expect from This Blog

Reasons why I write

Sharing my life with the world gives me a stronger sense of vulnerability and purpose. It's also surprisingly very fulfilling.

I have two main reasons for starting a blog in the first place:

1) To positively impact more people than just my friends
2) To satisfy a deep rooted entrepreneurial desire to start a website

I've been away from my blog over the past month - primarily because a lot has happened over the holiday break. My wife had a lot of downtime from teaching her ballet classes, so we got to spend more time together. We attended nearly all the holiday family events (on both sides), and we both got sick twice. All this downtime away from technology and writing in this blog opened up a bit of space for reflection about the current posts on this blog, and what I would like it to be.

What I write about

So far, this website (blog) hasn't had a lot of direction to it. You'll see that I started out with a haiku poem for my first post, then moved on to some informative articles and then threw in some comic strips, one of them being racist, which was a complete accident. Needless to say my blog needs a little bit of direction. And that is what I'm hashing out in this post.

One unsettling opportunity with my blog is that up till now it seems to have lacked a single topic. The current tagline "life, love, and miscellaneous wisdom" was purposefully designed to cover everything. I love the tagline, but these concepts seem to be too broad and not zeroed in on any one specific topic. But after some time meditating on it, I realized something that is probably very obvious to most. This blog is about me. After all this blog is at the web address Samuel Hatton dot com.

But if I were to take each part of my tagline and categorize the various of my life worth writing about in each of these broad categories, it would look like this:

Life:
Working on projects, developing my character and good habits, setting and accomplishing goals

Love:
Cultivating relationships - my marriage, friendships, family ties

Miscellaneous Wisdom:
Drawing on other people's wisdom from books, research, etc. and applying this wisdom to my life

Of course there is some overlap in the areas in my tagline. For example, if the things I'm writing about are from personal experience (life), there my be some "wisdom" that I'll be able to glean from the experiences. And cultivating meaningful relationships (love) is a part of "life."

But the central topic is me. We're talking about my life, love, and miscellaneous wisdom. It makes the most sense to primarily write from my personal experience focusing on lessons I'm learning from current projects as well as things in my life. Let's break it down in those two areas.

Projects I'm involved in

There are three major projects that I'm working on. Each of them have elements of website publishing and marketing.

1) Producing and managing marketing for a technology company

This is my full-time job. I've been at Endsight for two and a half years and love it. I have an amazing boss and other great mentors at the company who seed into my life. They encourage me to excel in my work. It's incredible! The department I work in is also a blessing, I've helped develop it, and I feel like I'm in a really good place.

2) Building an online side business

Since November, I get together every week with a friend and colleague to touch base on the formation of an online business. We brainstormed several different (10-15) online business ideas and picked the best one to dig into. The idea behind this project is similar to the reasons to why I started this blog - to impact lives and make a website hopefully earning some additional income as well - more on this project to come.

3) Using my talents to support foreign missions

In May, 2013 I met Mike Squires, a missionary who has a heart for Africa. He has spent the past 20 years teaching community leaders in villages. Among basic skills like management, public relations, and economics, he primarily teaches that integrity is the best thing to look for in choosing leaders. And much of his teaching comes from scripture too. It's fascinating. He expressed a need for funding as well as marketing talent. I've been financially supporting him monthly, but just last week I committed to applying my strengths in marketing to help raise funds so that he can leave the SF Bay Area and get to Ghana, Africa.

My personal experience

Just like any personal blog, I will also share some of the other things I'm learning in my daily life. These things can range from books I'm reading and how they apply to my own life, to handling personal finances, to planning a camping trip, and more. Also I will share about lessons relating to some of the roles I have in my life: employee, friend, son, brother, husband.

Yes, I'll be sharing some things from my marriage. I've been married a year and a half to a woman I've only known for a little longer than that. We love each other very much, and definitely have our differences. Our marriage is the most important relationship to me, and the most challenging thing I've ever been a part of. It's quite a journey and it's just begun. People say that we are still in our "honeymoon phase." However, our honeymoon was way better. Just getting along with my wife is an area that I'm growing in, so I'll probably share a bit about from time to time.

So these are some of the things I'll be sharing about in my blog - lessons from projects and daily life.

I'm keeping my tagline though. Life, love, and miscellaneous wisdom. Life comes from my experience and lessons, Love comes from my relationships and marriage, and Miscellaneous Wisdom comes from the things that I learn from books and people.

Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment if anything stands out to you. Also if you have any other ideas about personal blogs, I'd love to hear them!

Samuel Hatton is passionate about entrepreneurial activities. He builds,  implements and runs marketing programs at Endsight, SF Bay Area's choice locally outsource IT support provider. He also creates ventures like Life is a Play, a program dedicated to professional development motivation. You can find him on Google+ and Twitter. Samuel is always up for good discussions and activities regarding careers, marketing, entrepreneurship, performance, and dancing.