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Collecting people instead of things

    About twenty years ago, I purchased my first house.  I remember all of the houses that my wife and I visited and looked at before we decided to put in offer on the one we liked.  One house we saw stuck out because of the owner's peculiar collections.  On the walls of his house were framed shadow box collections of all sorts of items including : matchbooks, shot glasses, playing card decks, thimbles, hotel note pads, you name it.  I found it almost mezmorizing how many different things this man chose to collect and display.  Personally, I collected baseball cards as a youth.  I used my lawn-mowing and paper route money to purchase cards that I knew would appreciate in value, as well as certain players that I fancied.  Thirty years later, I am not sure what to do with the cards.  Combined, the entire collection is theoretically around $5000, but realistically, I wouldn't be able to get half that amount by selling them to dealers or on the internet.  Worse yet, even though I don't look at the cards often, I have a hard time parting with them. 
   
     My experience wtih the baseball cards has kept me from starting new collections of physical items, outside of the occasional piece of art that my wife and I have purchased for their aesthetic values.  Instead, I have spent the last 15 years collecting people.  No, I am not keeping shrunken heads on the walls of my basement.  I am referring to the networking that I have done not only for occupational purposes but for leisure and development purposes as well.  Everywhere I have lived, I have tried to find the right car mechanic for those things I can't do myself, or a local gardening expert that I can learn from.  In my work, I have come across a vast group of people that have certain skills that have been able to help me out with projects around the home.  In industry, I have searched out people with certain knowledge and skill that have been able to help me out on special projects or research.
    
    Lately, I have been doing a great deal of reading about organizational dynamics and motivation.  Since I have always had an interest in skills assessment, training, testing and career development, I have recently started taking coursework in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  In this quest for a way to pursue an advanced degree, I have been reading different books and contacting the authors to gain insight from them.  Amazingly enough, each one of them has responded to my emails personally and have always lent me a valuable bit of advice towards my quest.  The public library has been a godsend of information allowing me to check out all of these books, even the contemporary ones recently published.  An Industrial Psychologist that works with my employer has been extremely helpful with book suggestions (I don't know where he gets all of them, but they are spot on! Nobody can read that much.).

     Amazingly enough, this goofy blog I have been writing has also been the source of good mentors and collectable people.  The statistics tab on the blog control allows me to find out how each of you readers was able to find me, and how you found my site in your searches.  I can backtrack those searches and find different sites and blogs that write about the same things.  One that I like particularly well is Robert Tanner's http://www.managementisajourney.com/.  Robert's site is full of quick reads and useful advice.    Another is Wayne Turmel's http://www.crankymiddlemanager.com/.  There is http://www.sethgodin.com/.  Seth Godin writes very down-to-earth quick read books on the basic structure of motivation and marketing.   The first one I found was http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/.  Marshall Goldsmith has written some excellent books in regards to personal growth and motivation.  He also partners with a number of different people on webcasts and live podcasts that are truly original.

     I could go on for hours writing a long blog that most people won't bother to read through so I will keep it brief.  I can only hope that readers can gain something from this blog.  If you do, please drop me a line at dlbussell@comcast.net, join the blog as a follower or leave a comment.

Take Care,

Dave
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