Why Survival/Preparedness?

I'm not sure where all my readers live, but natural disasters happen everywhere, so I'm sure the term "preparedness" is familiar to all. I live in Calgary Canada. According to the Calgary Sun in 2013 "...The single largest loss event in North America was extensive flooding in the city of Calgary, Alberta, and surrounding area..." (see article here: http://goo.gl/ZHZZ7l ). Luckily I was living in Edmonton at the time but some of you were here in Calgary when it happened. Were you ready for a disaster like that? I know Calgary wasn't. Consider the flood in High River Canada, or the BC fires, ice storms in Eastern and Atlantic Canada, mudslide in Washington State. These happen all the time. We don't know when natural disasters are going to happen so we need to be prepared for when it does.

When my wife and I were living in Lethbridge, there was one sunday I remember coming out of church meetings and the sky was black. There was a grass fire west of Lethbridge and the high winds were pushing the fire towards the homes on the Northwest side between Lethbridge and Coalhurst. "thousands...forced out by grass fire" read one article ( http://goo.gl/Gs4Oy9 ). Luckily we were not evacuated but it got me thinking. If the knock came to your door that you have 5 minutes to grab your family and some things, what would you grab? Would you have everything you need to survive? Most of us would probably grab our kids, our pets and then stall wondering what else to save and what to leave behind. Would you grab your birth certificate? passport? insurance documents? computer? Snowboard? Food? That brand new PS4 you just bought?

I wanted to blog about survival and preparedness because I feel it is one subject that a lot of people dismiss as something that can be done later because most of us live in pretty safe areas. How many times have you been evacuated out of your homes? Me? Never. So for me the need to prepare for it was small.

It's funny. The biggest reason this got on my mind wasn't because of the fires or the flood. It wasn't the leaders of my church telling us for years now that we need to have 72 hour kits and food storage. It was a TV show. The Walking Dead. That is what set it off. 

So why would a real fire and real flood not push me to get my 72 hour kits done, but a TV show about zombies would? I don't actually know. It's silly really. It doesn't matter what gets us motivated to get the 72 hour kits ready. As long as we get them ready. 

I will get into the zombie thing another time. I feel I could write a few blogs on that subject, so I probably will. For now though, I wanted to tell you why I want to write and blog about it. Mostly it is going to be me writing about cool articles I have found on the subject and blogging about my families progress with our preparedness. There is more to it than just 72 hour kits and food storage. But what ever it entails, we need to do it all so when the time comes we are prepared and can continue to survive, even if surviving is as simple as making it to grandmas house. 

Why Leadership?

I have always liked the topic of leadership and I have always wanted to do public speaking. I have always enjoyed speaking in church and doing class presentations. I figured this would be a great way to get my passion out there and help inspire people to become leaders themselves. I included public speaking into this topic because this is what I want to speak on stage about. Leadership. Encouraging others to become better and become Leaders themselves.

A short story.

I was at work when I met a nice young couple looking for a new computer for their home business. I, being a business owner myself, wanted to talk more about their businesses than computers. I find out they own a photography business. She takes photos of people, weddings and the like, he takes photos of trucks and does calendars. That's not what caught my attention. He mentioned that he also owns a business doing public speaking. That has been a passion of mine for a long time. I have been trying to find ways to do it more often and other than just at church. That's actually why I started my own business. I mentioned that this is a passion of mine and I would love to sit down for coffee sometime and talk about it. I asked if he had a card and he gave me his info. I told him I would call him within the week. I had 2 objectives:

1: introduce him to my business and,
2: talk about his public speaking venture.

We sit down for coffee at a local Tim Hortons and we start talking about what he does. Turns out he travels the world and speaks on stage motivating people to accomplish what they put their minds to. I loved it all. It is exactly what I want to do. I shared my business idea with him and it turns out he and his wife are doing a similar thing already. Before our coffee drinking session was over he gave me some advice:

1: have a blog.
2: what can you give for free?
3: create your own site with your own content
4: don't forget to give thanks to God.

So here I am at advice step #1, creating my own blog. He said this is a great way to get my ideas out there and inspire people to change the way they think without getting up on a stage. I wanted to start a blog for a whole now so I figured why not now? 

So if you are aspiring to become a great leader in your family, work, school, or church life this is a great blog to follow!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome to A Blog by Sparky. I am going to blog about the things that are interesting to me. I will be organizing them into topics, and so far I have 3 (in no particular order).

1. Leadership development/Public Speaking.
2. Survival/Preparedness
3. Symbolism (mostly focusing on Scriptural Symbolism).

I know this list seems odd and random but that's what most of my spare time is filled with, one of these three topics.  I've been thinking about writing a blog for quite some time now, so I figure I should probably get started. There may be one or two more topics added to this list but I want to keep it 5 topics or less. I just can't narrow it down to one, so I figure why not write about all of them?

What's the goal of A Blog by Sparky?

First, it's going to be my study journal. Second, I want to inspire people. 

The future

You will see changes happening to the layout of the blog over the next little while as I figure out exactly how I want it to look. The name may also change, as I am currently second guessing myself. I was trying to create a word that would have all three topics in it; Leadsymvival, survbolismship, leadsurvibolism. lol. Then I realized the name would be to long and hard to remember. Although, leadsymvival is a pretty good one. lol. Anyways, I am currently using this blogger.com site while I build my own website to my liking. That wont be done for a while, but just a heads up. I know some of you wont be interested in all of my topics, so I put each topic on a page of its own.

For now, I am going to commit to a weekly post, probably write it on Sundays and have it ready and posted by Monday morning. Each post will be on one of the topics above, but which one I choose to write about will be random; what ever I am thinking about at the time.

Thanks and Welcome to Leadsymvival... err... I mean A Blog by Sparky!

*DISCLAIMER*
I am not a professional in any of these topics (yet). These are just things I am interested in and study on a regular basis.