First, 1 quick announcement.
The past four days have been a whirlwind experience. I’m still trying to make sense of it, dissect how and why it happened, and process it intellectually. I’ve been trying to document it all in real time over social media. But in case we’re not connected on those channels, I wanted to let you know here.
On Thursday night, I decided to write an article and post it on a site called Medium. I entitled it (link to Medium article).
[Actually, this was a rewrite of something I had written months ago on GiveLiveExplore. You may recall it as: ]
On Friday night, that article was shared by Tim Ferriss (one of my heroes) with his Facebook and Twitter followers. And from there, things went wild.
On Saturday night, I was approached by an editor at Huffington Post, asking if I’d like to repost my article there. Of course, I said YES.
On Sunday afternoon, my article went live on Huffington Post. And over the past 48 hours, it’s continued to spread onward and upward. (The Medium site has had over 47,000 hits, and the HuffPost has over 2,200 Facebook likes as of writing).
Link to HuffPost article: https://huff.to/1hRV1wB
Once the dust settles, I plan on sharing details on the anatomy of this virality (is that not a word?) in a future post. Basically, I want to share the data behind it all — the number of hits, likes, tweets, emails, new subscribers, and the such. I want to share the details behind a viral hit.
I want to share these details, because this all kinda feels like an out of body experience — how and why did this happen to me? I’m not entirely sure, but I have some ideas.
But because it did happen to me, and because you’ve trusted me enough to let me float into your inbox periodically over the past weeks, months, even the past year and a half, I feel like it’s my privilege and duty to share it with you all. It’s been an incredible experience and maybe something we can all learn from. Believe me when I say, this wouldn’t have happened without you.
Which leads me to…1 big thank you.
THANK YOU for joining me on this journey. All of you. Especially those of you who have been with me since the VERY beginning — since June 2, 2012, when I embarked on that fateful oneway flight to Iceland.
I started writing on GiveLiveExplore (and sharing my writing with you) to document my journey through Europe. I had NO IDEA where it would lead. I had NO CLUE if anyone would care. I stepped into a world of uncertainty, not knowing where it would take me. But still I stepped forward, shooting from the gut, knowing from someplace inside me, that I was doing what I was born to do.
THANK YOU. Seriously. None of the above would have happened without your support, your comments, your nudges, and your encouragement. Every time you ‘liked’ something, commented on a post, responded to an email, shared something I wrote with others, or just opened and read my email…you kept me going.
And while this is a huge and surprising accomplishment for me (honestly, 1 year ago I never thought I could write for a Huffington Post or similar), I’m certainly not done. In fact, I have a feeling this is just the beginning. Stay tuned…
Much love!
Matt
If you read and enjoyed the HuffPost article, will you please share it with someone else who would appreciate it? Just click one of the links below to share in your favorite way:
1. Twitter
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