Tuesday, January 4, 2011

BadskiBlog Top 10 Of 2010!


2010 was a challenging year. Between adapting to new job/city, going into hibernation for 2-3 months studying for the GMAT, running Checking For Charity from afar, and a six month deployment to Iraq away from my lovely wife and dog it is easy to see why it has been a challenging year and why BadskiBlog has taken a hit as far as quantity of content goes. With that being said, I can honestly say that I have been much more conscious of churning out quality verses quantity this past year. As I get “better” at blogging I find myself struggling more and more to ensure I have worthy topics to write about. I don’t want to write posts that don’t get my adrenaline going a bit. I want to post topics that challenge me and continue my goal of exploration and growth. Here are my 'self proclaimed' best posts of 2010 in no particular order. Thanks to everyone who has been part of this blog in one way, shape, or form.

1. Full Circle - Lessons From One Sandbox To Another: A group of life and leadership lessons that were learned as a child yet helped me while I was deployed to Iraq.

2. Optimist Optimized: A post detailing how my deployment experience changed my perspective on my life stateside. The greatest gift I was given was the ability to see just how blessed my life stateside is.

3. What You Can Learn From A Group Of Has Been Metalheads - Anvil: The Story Of Anvil: A movie review of "Anvil: The Story of Anvil." The movie is an unbelievable feel good movie that made huge waves in the independent movie scene. It is not just about playing loud with these guys, it is about living a fulfilling life. Plenty of life lessons to be learned from these unlikely wise men.

4. Practice, Preparation, and Paralleling Reality: Thoughts on optimizing your habits, practice and preparation to successfully accomplish your goals.

5. Warren Buffett On Integrity: An awesome video from a humble, wise, and honorable business leader on the importance of integrity. I love how Warren Buffett makes the most simple statements seem like the most insightful statements in the world. Often we get so bogged down in complex theories and practices that we forget the powerful and truly timeless themes for success that are overarching in a myriad of pursuits.

6. Humility & Hubris - Learning From A Punch In The Mouth: This passage explores different scenarios where getting a dose of humility can be a good thing and how you can approach adversity and come out the other side a better person.

7. A Combat Landing - Welcome To Your New World: Initial thoughts and observations of my journey in Baghdad, Iraq. A combination narrative and introspective exploration of the deployed world.

8. Mental Balance And A Growing Trend: A couple articles on the unique skills and experiences that Junior Military Officers (JMOs) are bringing to Corporate America. The post also has interesting statistics showing the changing value placed on JMOs by Corporate America over time and of course some of my own thoughts on the subject.

9. The Deployment Mirror - Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV: Narratives detailing my daily life in Iraq. The posts mostly spawned from requests of family and friends to share my experiences in a manner similar to the Combat Landing post above. I must say that as a kid I did want to be a "creative writer" when I grew up so these posts were a welcome departure from my normal blogging.

10. Goodbye Baghdad!: Quick thoughts from Al Udeid, Qatar just a few short hours after I had departed Baghdad for home.

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