Does not the sun’s warmth glow most full as when reflected upon the waves?
I find solace in every shore.
Home is not one place; no location.
Home is within.
Every blade of grass is home. Every tree, a friend but not made.
Home is a state of mind, of being; a condition that is nurtured within the confines of our skin and is realized in our “oneness” to everything without.
The State of the Renegade Address
Hey readers and fellow Renegades! Welcome to the “State of the Renegade” Address for September, 2010. As you are aware, I recently decided to make a monthly habit of posting updates that give you a better sense of the updates, changes and developing projects at DaveUrsillo.com. I call these updates the “State of the Renegade” Address. I value your support and feedback and I hope that you’ll offer me some constructive criticism and any suggestions you might have in the comments section below! Thank you for reading; I am truly humbled by and appreciative of your support.
1. Life Update: Moving from Rhode Island to Boston
As the poem above insinuates, I recently moved away (again) from my home state, Rhode Island. As someone who in youth went through frequent bouts of separation and social anxiety (codewords for bad homesickness), I was mildly concerned about moving away from my family and friends in Rhode Island, especially at a time when I was so happy and comfortable with how life was progressing.
Nevertheless, because perhaps I was too comfortable, I deduced that I should force change rather than let changes come to me. I summed up my intent in a post called “Inciting Change When You WANT Things To Stay The Same.” Now nearly a month into living in Boston, I’m happy to report that the move and adjustment has gone well. As the journal entry above states, “home” is within, regardless of where you live. Home really is anywhere you allow it to be.
2. “Unique Visitors” Continues to Increase
Traffic to DaveUrsillo.com is up this month by 26.46 percent, thanks largely in part to some traffic spikes originating from both Reddit.com and StumbleUpon.com. First and most of all, THANK YOU for reading. I’m continually amazed and honored to see a rise in unique visitors on DaveUrsillo.com over the last few months. I attribute the steady growth (the last 6-8 months in particular) to starting to blog on a schedule of twice per week (currently, every Monday and Thursday).
Above you can see Unique Visitors in blue, and Pageviews Per Visit in orange. The only drawback with sporadic spikes in traffic from Stumble/Digg/Reddit visitors is that the tendency is for them to spend significantly less time on the destination page, and have less of “a look around” than ordinary readers. These qualities are manifested in DaveUrsillo.com’s numbers for September, showing a slightly lower Average Time on Site (by about 50 seconds) and a slight decrease in Total Pages Viewed by each unique visitor, (from 2/visit to about 1.6/visit).
3. New Ebooks and DaveUrsillo.com Store in Progress
On the DaveUrsillo.com Facebook Page in August, I announced my plans to write and self-publish my own e-books. They are progressing, although their progress has been slower than I anticipated after moving and some other travel in September. Rest assured, they will be of extremely high quality and a lot of fun to read! I am even beginning to design the e-books’ covers…
I am also in the process of designing some limited edition t-shirts to sell through a “DaveUrsillo.com Shop.” Why? Well, why not? I plan to integrate short pieces of my writing from DaveUrsillo.com over the last year and design them sharply into some comfortable apparel. I hope you will consider buying them! :)
Another project I began in September was a collaborative e-book project written by writers I’ve connected with on Twitter. The idea for the e-book is to utilize our “e-connections” to one another, thanks to Twitter, and unite our talents and passions in order to create a free e-book for our readers and friends. The goal of the e-book is to inspire men and women to reconnect with their local communities and forge renewed interpersonal connections to those around them as a catalyst for greater happiness. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this soon!
