Giving Thanks

It’s Thanksgiving, and despite our culture’s continuous pull to rename this day Turkey Day or some such and shift the focus to the feasting, I’d like to keep the focus on the actual point of the day: giving thanks to the Almighty, and to family, friends, and others for the life we have.

First, I give thanks for my family and for my two wonderful, happy, rambunctious boys who are sure to drive their mom and dad to premature grey, potential alcohol abuse, and poverty as they eat us out of house and hearth.  The joy they give me is unparalleled, and watching them go from mewling human-larvae to little boys is a profound experience that gives meaning to each and every day.

I give thanks that I am an American and live in the United States.  Even as we march steadily towards European-style socialism and decay, there is still no doubt that this is the greatest country in the history of human existence.  It’s something that people who haven’t lived elsewhere don’t fully appreciate.  In no other country on earth could I have started a company as easily and as quickly as I have here, and been given the opportunities that I have been given this year.  Freedom, sweet Freedom… every single American owes thanks that we enjoy a life that the rest of the world only dreams of.

Which means, of course, that I am grateful to the men and women of the American military.  It is not the Constitution that guarantees our freedom: it is our military.  It is not the lawyers and community activists who provide us with freedom: it is our military.  It is not the politicians, the journalists, the pundits, the cosmopolitan know-it-alls who would guide us to a “better future” who give us freedom: it is the poorly paid, oft-maligned soldiers who the elites think are idiots and morons who do.  The greatest human rights organization in the history of the world is the United States military; they have freed more people from bondage, brought liberation and equality to more men and women, and saved the lives of more human beings than all other so-called human rights organizations put together.  They stand on the wall, face the dangers, and pay the ultimate price so that the rest of us can be blithely ignorant of how dangerous and cruel the world really is.  I am thankful for them, and grateful to them.

I am grateful to the clients of 7DS Associates, my little fledgling venture.  All of them have taken chances with a brand new company, on a guy with an unproven track record as a strategy consultant, and I am profoundly grateful to each and every one of them.  We won’t let you down.

I am thankful for my partner, Jeff Corbett, who is often the yin to my yang, and who puts up with thunderous snoring on the road and a constant stream of dumb ideas.  We will build greatness, my friend.

And of course, I am grateful to each and every one of you, the readers of Notorious R.O.B.  I never dreamed when I started this blog in January of 2008 that I would have even a dozen readers.  I figured this is where I’d just scribble about random things on real estate, technology, and marketing and maybe get a few other weirdoes commenting or going back and forth with me on esoteric topics.  Instead, many of you have slogged through things like a 15,000 word essay on military counterintelligence doctrine and its applicability to real estate sales, and some of you have provided invaluable insight and argumentation that have helped me learn and challenge my own thinking.  NROB is still not the highest trafficked blog by any stretch of the imagination — I think I get about 500 visitors on an average week — but I daresay the Notorious community is one of the most engaged, most educated, most insightful, and most active in the RE.net.  You guys all rock!  Thank you.

Some other things I am thankful for:

• 2009 New York Yankees
• The entire REBarCamp movement
• Robin Skouteris
• Female vocalists, especially in techno/trance music
• Blip.fm, for creating the single most distracting “social media” toy ever
• Dunkin Donuts coffee
• Whoever invented fantasy football
• The engineers at Apple
• Mike, Wendy, and Jeff for one unforgettable (even if you tried, and I have) evening
• The RPR, for providing me with the highest three day traffic total ever
• Mark Steyn, for writing and continuing to write
• Glenn Reynolds
• The Lucky Strike Social Media Club and the regulars who show up, even from California
• City of Philadelphia, for inventing the cheesesteak sandwich
• City of Buffalo, for y’know… the wings
• Mark Sanchez, for reminding me of the limits of expectations on a rookie
• Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco, for reminding me that one year does not make a trend
• The Discount Yacht Supplies store somewhere in Newport Beach area for exemplifying irony
• The Hughes brothers for an interesting angle on real estate brokerage business models
• Verizon Wireless, for not being AT&T

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

-rsh