Today is my last post on Naples Girl blog. I started this blog on December 12, 2008 with my very first post 9 Days But Who’s Counting. I have enjoyed sharing my personal side/thoughts with the world, but it is time to switch my focus elsewhere. I am not a writer, although I do enjoying sharing my inner thoughts with others.
Over these past 11 months, I have written 245 posts and have had 156 comments. My top post, which had the most hits, was Michael Jackson – The End Of an Era.Figures. It wasn’t one of my favorites.
You can still find me other places. I will still be blogging at Chat With The Chamber, tweeting on Twitter, and making friends on Facebook. It is just time to simplify my life a little bit. One blog is enough.
I love to listen to Pandora. Today I start out listening to George Winston and this piece just came on. Beautiful.
UPDATE: The only downfall to Pandora is that you are limited to 40 hours of free listening per month. I reached mine today. But I get to start all over again on Thursday!
Been working on compiling candidate questionnaires this weekend. This is something that our organization does each year to help educate our members on where candidates running for office stand on business issues.
As I have been putting these together, I am surprised at the lack of knowledge from some on key issues. It made me think back to when I ran for office and what I did to prepare and who helped me along the way.
One would think that the leaders in each political party would counsel their candidates on current issues and have them talk with different leaders in the community. I’m pretty sure this isn’t happening from the answers I have been reading. I have been all around the political wheel – I have been an elected official, a candidate, a winner and a loser and the spouse of an elected official. Here is what I see that is wrong with the political process on the local level: We are just happy to give the opposing side some opposition. It really doesn’t matter if our candidate is knowledgable or has the desire or is running for the right reasons. As long as they have the same letter behind their name as we do, we automatically support that person, in most cases. And we pat them on the back and say ‘good luck’ and send them 25 bucks and commit to voting for them in November.
When I ran for mayor, I can honest tell you that I did not get the kind of support from my political party that I think candidates need. So I went out and met with people on my own to become knowledgable on the issues. I would think that local parties would want to offer that kind of support to their candidates instead of letting them float around without a clear understanding of key issues. Because if they do get elected, what have we really gained? Sure, we have one more person on our team, but they are now going to be making decisions on issues that they know little about and in the end, we are the ones who will suffer for it.
I guess the purpose of this post (besides my rant) is if you come across a candidate who needs some mentoring, or maybe just a different point of view on something, please offer to speak with them. Don’t assume that they have been ‘brought up to speed’ on anything, because chances are that they haven’t.
