Peter Shankman wrote a great blog recently entitled, “Why I’m Not Going to SXSW This Year – A Brutally Honest Post”.   For those of you who may not have heard of Peter Shankman yet, he is known as a social entrepreneur, angel investor, CEO, Speaker and Adventurist.  Here’s a little blurb from his website:

Peter is perhaps best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year has become the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 125,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media. HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the world, sending out over 1,200 queries from worldwide media each week. HARO’s tagline, “Everyone is an Expert at Something”, proves over and over again to be true, as thousands of new members join at helpareporter.com each week.

I bring his blog to your attention because I believe it takes a lot of courage to do something different (and for sure to send it out to the world at large!), like not attend SXSW because you want to take care of yourself  (South By Southwest which is a huge music/technology conference that takes place in Austin, Texas during spring break week in March when all kinds of people from all corners of the globe descend to our little paradise in the hill country.  Peter tells us that he doesn’t believe he is an alcoholic, but rather that he tends to drink very fast (like he lives his life) and finds himself in situations as a result that he would rather not find himself (verbally, physically, etc.) Whatever the case, I’m glad Peter spoke up.  There are a whole lot of people who will listen to him who may be feeling the same way or at least sitting on the fence.

SXSW does not have to a scene from “Party Down“, in fact it is really possible to have a whole lot of fun and get a lot of “work” done in the process via connecting and interacting.  I’ve been alcohol-free for 20+ years and yet when my husband and I get together with six of our favorite scuba diving friends for rest and relaxation swimming and diving in various blue waters in the world, you’d never know it! I get in there and laugh and have fun with the best of them.  Actually, I think I’m a lot more fun then when I was drinking because I can stay awake a whole lot longer!

I wanted to bring Peter’s honest blog to your attention to jog your thoughts just in case there might be something that you would like to do differently this year, may this give you the shot of courage you need!