Humbled is the only word I can think of to describe all the wonderful  traffic to this blog and passionate emails I have received from those of you who have viewed My Declaration of Independence.

Over 5,000 people have viewed it in the last 2 days, in great part due to endorsements from two people I consider incredible role models in the creative world:

Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users and Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen.

Kathy is a fiercely passionate, talented and wickedly smart voice in the blogging world.  She has a unique and compelling perspective, and I always learn something from her posts.  (An example is her recent I am not a "woman blogger" or Angry, negative people can be bad for your brain)  She has a great relationship with her readers, evidenced from the huge number of comments on each post and Top 100 ranking in Technorati.

Garr is a thoughtful and talented designer who has one of those rare gifts of not only creating beautiful designs, but also writing very eloquently about it.  He shares insight, tips, good examples and knowledge about presentation design that should be required reading for anyone who has to present ideas for a living.  Some of my favorite posts are the very funny Yoda vs. Darth Vader, Make your next presentation naked and What is good Powerpoint design?.

Thank you so much Kathy and Garr for your support - I felt like I was the klutzy kid suddenly getting picked first for the softball team.

And thanks to everyone else who viewed the movie, blogged about it and shared it with your friends.  I cracked up at some of the comments about it, people who were embarrassed to admit that they liked a "sappy" presentation or teared up at a slide or two.  I realize that it leans towards the Hallmark side of life (or Deep Thoughts for any of you Saturday Night Live fans), yet I still am proud to stand up and promote it!  I am the first in line to enjoy sharp, sassy and cynical writing.  AND sometimes we need to let go of our brains and not be afraid to feel.  I spoke from my heart and truly want each of you to believe in yourself and your capabilities.

I have gotten lots and lots of email responses to the question I ask of new subscribers to my ezine.  I promise I will get back to all of you as soon as I can.  Thanks for your patience.

A number of people were curious where I got the images and sound for the movie.  I used istockphoto.com almost exclusively (besides the Peru photo of course) and I found the music on stockmusic.net. 

Finally, my wildly talented friend Marilyn Scott-Waters from thetoymaker.com (her site that has had more than 2 million downloads of her free paper toys) made a fun button for me that you see on this post.  I have a fantasy of passing it out at the mouth of the metro stops in San Francisco, New York and Chicago as people pour out of the trains and run to their corporate jobs.  I may make some real ones just for fun.  Anyone interested?

The image in the middle is the new logo for my company Ganas Consulting, and is the Celtic symbol for fire.  The heart of what I do is reconnect people with their inner fire (we all had a connection once, remember your passion as a little kid?).  As a little girl, I was always fascinated by fire (don't worry, not lighting fires, just looking at them).  I even wrote a poem about it when I was 5 years old (original spelling retained):

the fire pome

the fire sparkils in the air.
the smok flys up in the air.
it is a buitfull site.
i like righting pomes.
it is fun.
it is fun being a proson.
i really like being me.  just me.
the end.

I hope you all go into this weekend really liking being you, just you!

Thanks again for your support!