2010 is a new year

After a long hiatus, I'm back...or at least I'm going to try to be.

I've missed this blog. Apparently others have too, as several people have reached out in the last few months to say, "Are you going to continue to write?," "When will you post again?," or "I miss your posts." It's really touching to know that my thoughts on marriage are engaging enough to be missed!

2009 was a trying year for me. The first half of the year was really spent trying to cope with the recession, business-wise. And the second half was spent working my butt off trying to make up for work that wasn't around for the first 6 months.

Well, I'm happy to say 2010 is starting out on a much better note. Finally, I think I have the extra mental space to direct towards this. I hope I do. Just by writing this blog, I think I give more thought to my marriage, making it front and center and myself more conscious of it's main objectives, which are to:

• Make tangible the advice "Don't take you partner for granted;" and
• Live by the mantra "If it doesn't work, fix it."

Consider me back. Another post will follow in the coming days.

Headed to Finland

I wanted to give you all the heads up that I'll be taking a break from writing for the Designing Marriage blog over the next couple of weeks. I'm headed to Finland today for a workshop that I'll be participating in over there.

Over the past few months, I've been working on a grant project intent on developing a new payment strategy/ transaction model for assisting a low-income, Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) community in purchasing a shared resource, such as water harvesting equipment. To date, I've been advising the research team remotely in their in-field data collection efforts in rural areas of the Philippines and in India. This week and next, the team and myself are meeting in Helsinki, Finland to analyze the data that has been collected and conceptualize a new transaction model for selling shared resources to BoP communities.

I'm expecting the workshop–which is 8 days in length–to be pretty intense, so I will bid you all farewell for now. I likely will be posting periodic updates regarding the workshop's progress on the Sylver blog (just launched last week), so feel free to check it out if interested. Otherwise, I'll reconvene with you all during the week of April 27.