Today is the 11th week since I started the weekly gratitude posting.  I hope you’ve been enjoying them because for me, it’s a great reminder to be thankful for whatever lessons I might have learned that week or for unexpected opportunities/gifts that might have come my way.  I’ve always subscribed to the belief that maintaining an attitude of gratitude is a tool to help focus on the things you have, not what you don’t have.  It’s a weekly exercise I’m committed to. (Photo:  Shelly)

As you know, I usually post end-of-the-week gratitude articles on Fridays but with so many exciting things happening at Adversity University this week (especially the new interview series), it got pushed back to today.   

Posting a list of things I’m grateful for doesn’t always have to be serious.  In fact, something humorous in the world of blogging happened last night and it affected almost every single blogger out there, including yours truly.  It probably made them jump for sheer joy this morning.  

What happened was better than sex for me. 

Yes, that’s right.  Better than sex.   Whoo-hoo!

Keep going, I’ll tell you in a minute.

Most bloggers who dream of hitting it big suffers, to some degree, an overriding obsession with traffic stats and subscriber count.  And they would probably join Bloggers Anonymous if there was such a thing.  I can just see myself at one of their meetings: 

Hello, my name is Stephen Hopson and I’m a traffic and subscriber junkie. 

Yeah, that would be me.

SO imagine how I almost fell off my chair this morning when, as usual, I pulled up my daily Feedburner report this morning.  Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to see something like this?          

I was like, what in the world just happened?  How did I manage to more than double my subscriber count overnight?  My brain was positively abuzz with caffeine and sheer ecstasy this morning.     

But alas, it was short-lived.    

Ladies and gentlemen, while I consider myself to be an optimistic person and believe that miracles can and do happen, I was a tad suspicious when I saw that 75% of the subscribers were coming from Feedblitz. 

Something wasn’t right.  After all, when I moved from Blogger to WordPress last October, I discontinued using Feedblitz and switched over to Feedburner’s much better syndication system.   Fortunately, I was able to transfer the existing list of Feedblitz email subscribers but once I made the move, there was no way a new visitor could become a subscriber through them because I was no longer providing their sign-up box!   

The investigator in me decided to do some more research.  In a matter of minutes, I found my answer.  Feedblitz had indeed been wreaking havoc on the minds of millions of bloggers by plying them with false numbers because of a technical glitch on their end.  It’s been reported that they are in the process of fixing the problem.  But the addict in me hopes they’ll take their time!  No rush here – let me stare at these fantastic numbers for just a little while longer, please!  (Update 1/20/09:  Apparently they must have heard the calling for today’s report told me I now have 5,177 subscribers with 96% coming from Feedblitz, again!  I guess their programmers must have taken the weekend off or something).

Having said that, I wish to express my gratitude to Feedblitz for grossly inflating the numbers last night.  It gave me an opportunity to crystalize in my mind the future of Adversity University.  They say if the mind and conceive and believe, it will come true.  So there you have it. 

Let’s make a pact together.  Let’s collectively visualize that this blog will swell to 900 5,177 subscribers within 3 months.  How’s that?    

On a more serious note, let me express some gratitude for some other things that happened this week:  

• Two more interviews have been lined up at Adversity University.  Yesterday, I announced that Shaun Boyd of LifeReboot will be interviewed next week (see Stephen Hopson Interview with Shaun Boyd Coming Up!) with another one following in February with John Wesley (Pick the Brain).  Both promise to be highly engaging, informative and inspiring.  If you aren’t yet a subscriber, there’s a little box at the end of this post so that you won’t miss any of them (wink, wink, wink!). 
• Nothing can be more powerful than the lesson I learned this past week when I plucked up the courage to take on a speaking engagement that I almost didn’t accept because of fear.  The lesson of the week for me is that I am capable of reaching out and touching the lives of anyone out there, even the “toughest-looking” people.  You can read more about this at: ”How I Almost Let Fear Stop Me From Accepting a $4,000 Engagement.” 

Food for Thought:  What are you grateful for this week?

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