Unforeseen byproducts of blogging

One of the things I learned during my experience at the Banff Centre is the importance of journaling. The recording of one's thoughts and emotional reactions to your experiences. This is especially important for leadership development.

While I consider myself an introspective person, I have never tried to keep a journal. I'm just not a paper person. Don't like pencils. Got messy handwriting. However, I recently realized that this blog is a journal (duh). And since I started this blog, I've been able to look back on situations and reflect on and understand my emotional reactions to them. I've been able to learn from my experiences. And I see growth.

If you're on the fence about blogging, this reason alone is a good one to get off the fence and do it.

Also, I think that I got a lot more out of the recent ASAE Annual Meeting because I was blogging it. Felt some sort of obligation to my readers (and those at the XtremeASAEblog) to record and share my thoughts. I got way more out of the meeting than I would have if I were just a passive participant.

Two surprising results of writing a blog.