Folks, Happy New Year!

Yes, I’ve been missing in action but don’t worry.  I’ll swing back into the groove.   I didn’t do the gratitude post last week not because I wasn’t grateful.  I actually have a huge list that I’m saving for later but after spending a fabulous week with my brother, his family and my folks for the holidays, I came home and degenerated into a cocoon for two reasons.

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Well, did you all have a good holiday (assuming you celebrated something)?   I was away at my brother’s house in Virginia for an entire week and had a fabulous time celebrating Christmas with his family along with my Mom and Dad.    The week flew by all too quickly and before I knew it, I was back home in Ohio.    I’ll talk more about my holiday experience in the next gratitude post later this week.  (Photo:   Stuck in Customs’)

Luckily because I brought my new laptop with me, I was able to post the first of two parts of an interview i did with Lance from Jungle of Life last week and what a hoot it was!

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1.  One of my favorite questions when I want to learn about someone is by asking them to give me their 5 second introduction when I pose the question:  “What do you do for a living?”

I’ll give you the 3-second answer:  I make people happy.

As I thought about this question, Stephen, I kept coming back to what is it that I really do provide?  What is it, at a higher level, that I do for a living?  I kept asking myself if this answer, really, was a legitimate answer.  Maybe it would seem too fluffy.  Not enough substance to it.  And yet, at a very core level, I do believe this is it.  For a more detailed answer on how I do this, my About page gets into a little more of the nitty gritty.

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For those of you still in the workforce, I’ll bet you’re grateful that it’s the end of the week, right?

Well, that’s a good start, isn’t it?    You see, there’s always something to be grateful for if you just look closely.

Here - let me give you a gratitude quote I found online by someone named John Henry Jowett:

“Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic”

Let’s take a look at what happened this week that led to constant renewal of gratitude for me:

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Many of you have been asking me questions in the comment section that I can’t help but put up another “self interview” so I can answer them for you.    So please forgive me if I appear to be delusional and humor me for a bit, okay?

As you all know by now, I am extremely passionate about two things that have emerged this year.  Can you guess at least one of them?  (Hint:  It “started in September 2008.”)

Still can’t figure it out?

Okay, how about this….a good handful of you have been following me on this thing and you’re trying it out for yourselves.

Give up?

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As I sit here and write the end of the week blog post, it’s snowing out there.  It’s one of those winters that when you look out the window, it’s breathtakingly beautiful but the moment you step outside, it becomes another story altogether!  (Photo:  vtpeacnik)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the beauty of winter around here.   In fact, I happen to live in the Valley where I’m surrounded by miles and miles of woods and state parks.   It’s one reason I continue to stay here.

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I’m here at the Nervous Dog Coffee Bar in Akron, using my new laptop and writing my first-ever post away from the home office.  How cool is that?  (Photo credit:  Laughing Squid)

By the way, for those of you who are RSS/email subscribers, just so that you know, I have two articles for you today.  This one and “End of the Week Gratitude Theme # 54.”  Simply scroll up your email/RSS notification and you’ll see both of them.

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I know, this is long overdue.    November 25th was the last entry I made with Part II of my interview with Philip McCluskey who lost half of his body weight (went from 400 to 200 lbs) on a raw food diet.  Have you seen his incredible weight loss photos?   If not, take a moment to visit both interviews and see for yourself.

Then BOOM, the Thanksgiving holiday came and went and now it’s DECEMBER!!

For those of you who are on my RSS/email subscription list, you will see two blog posts today.

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Here we are, with Philip McCluskey, the inspiring raw foodist who lost half of his body weight in 2.5 years just from adopting a raw food lifestyle.  If you missed the first part, go see Stephen Hopson Interview with Philip McCluskey, Loving Raw, Part I of II before you read the final part.

Before we call Philip from the back, I just want to wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving!  I’ll be writing my weekly gratitude post at the end of the week as usual, after Thanksgiving.    Hopefully you’ll have a moment to look at it despite the holidays.

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Before we delve into this week’s gratitude post, I thought I’d share that I’ve noticed lately that whenever I upload photos, especially if there are more than a couple, it somehow messes up the HTML coding, cutting off certain parts of the article.   I never had that problem before so it must have something to do with the recent WordPress upgrade to Version 2.6.2.

The last two posts got screwed up because of this HTML thing.  Thankfully it was spotted by Nita, an alert subscriber, who told me she couldn’t see parts of the article and the comment box - they had “mysteriously disappeared” said Nita.

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Now that I’m back from London and Dallas, I’m finally getting back into the groove here at Adversity University.    Hopefully you enjoyed reading about my Dallas speaking engagement with Frito-Lay and the trip to London last week.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I began my raw food journey in September 2008 with awesome (I should say RAWsome) results.  I created a new category here called “Raw Food Journey” for those of you interested in this way of eating.   Not long ago, a domain name was reserved for “Stephen Gone Raw” (a.k.a. Stephen Gone Crazy).    I’m in the process of looking for a theme to adopt and then implement a new blog just for this topic - raw foods.    So stay tuned!

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This is a plate served at the famous Gratitude Cafe in SF

GOOOOOOOOD morning folks - at least it’s morning here - 4:52 am!

I got up at 4 am which has become the norm for me this week starting with 3 am the day after I returned from London followed by 4 am and 5 am the two mornings after that.

What’s going on?

I’ve read in several raw food books that the cleaner you become inside, the less sleep you need.   Could this be what’s happening?   Or am I still getting over jet lag?

More on that later.

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The title says it all.

What’s the point of life if you aren’t willing to play and take chances like making last minute, seemingly irrational decisions and fly off somewhere because your intuition told you to do so?

I just got back from spending an incredible week in London and I’m about to tell you all about it.   London was a place I had never before been to and is a place I know I will be visiting more and more frequently in the future.  Heck, I might even move there!   No, I’m not kidding.

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"Reflect Each Day On All You Have To Be Grateful For And You Will Receive More To Be Grateful For." -Chuck Danes

Wow, what a week!    The weekly gratitude posts are turning out to be more popular than I thought - who ever knew?

First of all, the week was filled with mostly travel to and from Dallas for my Frito-Lay speaking engagement, which I will touch upon with some photos.

Today (Saturday), I am packing to fly to London tomorrow for a week.    It was a sudden, last minute decision where all the pieces of the puzzle magically fell into place.  Unbelievable how it happened - more on that in a bit.

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My goodness where did the time go?  It was just a week ago when we aired Part I of my interview with Barbara Swafford but it felt like it happened yesterday!  If you didn’t catch that fabulous interview, I suggest you go back to Stephen Hopson Interview with Barbara Swafford of Blogging without a Blog, Part I of II because it set the Adversity University campus on fire with over 50 comments - the most ever!  This promises to be even MORE explosive because, according to Barbara, my questions truly pulled some things from the depth of her soul.  You’ll see in a moment.

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