I’ve got to say it’s been quite a blast the last few days. With the amount of attention I’ve received on my blog, forums, and personal emails, you’d think I had passed the CCIE exam. I’ve received an equal amount of congratulatory comments from bloggers who I admire and whose pages I frequent, as well as others I’ve never heard from before. And these are coming from people who have been in this field much longer than I have. They are more knowledgeable, more experienced, and accordingly, are in much respectable places in their respective fields. Then there are others who are my “equals” . They are the ones who are on the same boat as I am, sharing in my struggles and my triumphs, and will continue to do so as long as we stay in the same paths.

When I started with this blog, my first inspiration was CCIE Candidate. Then from there I discovered CCIE Pursuit, CCIE Journey (notice the trend) followed by others on their blogrolls. But those big 3 were my first inspiration. The only problem was, much of the contents in them were not applicable to my level of knowledge. So I took what I could from those blogs and tried to get what I could. And what I discovered from reading their personal accounts was that even though the technical contents in those pages were a little bit over my head, the realness of their pursuit, or journey – pun – were as tangible and real as mine. It didn’t matter that these guys were running for their CCIEs and I was running for CCNA. Whatever level we were running at, we still had to put a lot of effort in what we wanted to attain. A baby just learning to walk exerts a lot of effort just as much as Kobe Bryant (I’m a fan , So Kobe haters, give me my moment!) practicing to perfect his jump shots. Sure the kind of focus and the amount of determination is different. But nevertheless, it is both hard and painful for both. So I was able to identify with these blogs and use them as my motivation.

Before this blog was started, I thought to myself, there must be others out there documenting their experiences and are at least in the same league as I am. Around that time I have already decided to pursue the CCNA and change my current stagnating career. So I scoured the Internet in hopes of finding blogs that are at the beginner or intermediate level. Unfortunately there were not as many. And whatever ones I found where either outdated or insufficient. So, inspired by CCIE blogs I have read so far, as well as for other reasons, I decided to start my own. I was not entirely new to blogging. I have kept a personal blog since early 2004, that until recently, have taken the back seat in favor of this one.

My first goal for the blog was pretty basic. That is, to keep a journal of my studies and document my notes ala CCIE Candidate. When I started reading Ethan’s blog, I was convinced that it would be a very effective method of studying. Most of you know the result of his hard work. Some of the benefits I saw in following that format were:

• Obviously, it’s a great way to take notes and make it into a nice bulleted format that you can easily read and peruse.
• It forces you to examine what you are writing because you cannot just write anything that does not make sense.
• Committing to update my blog regularly forces me to read. Duh!
• It’s an excellent way to keep everything organized. I can categorize my posts so that all related topics and technologies can be sorted to display on one page.

There are also other benefits that I did not originally intend to come out:

• By adding a “print post” module, I was able to print out a bulleted reference of each chapters during my review. It was portable and easily available for light review, as opposed to carrying a book.
• I’ve had at least five people in the last week telling me via email, comment, or IM, that they’ve used my notes to supplement their own studies.
• By having my blog published out on the internet and making my presence known, more and more people with blogs similar to mine started to contact me and let me know they themselves are out there. That was a pleasant result as it satisfied my goal of finding comparable materials as mine. Okay, so this point is a benefit that I intended to happen. But I didn’t have the control over the results when I was just starting out.
• It’s a great side effect to have people all over the world sharing, discussing, and collaborating with you. It lets them know that there are others out there doing the same things, aspiring to attain the same price, and working hard just as you are. It breeds inspiration, motivation, and respect.
• It’s a good feeling to know people care. Okay maybe they don’t. But at least they’re interested. Because of our curios nature, we tend to want to know how others do things and how others are doing. Reading other people’s blogs somewhat satisfies that curiosity. It helps those who are otherwise lost or needing some kind of direction. It does me, at least.
• We are a glutton for information. And that is usually good. Maybe not all the time, but, usually. Whatever information I put out there, others come back with better and helpful ones.
• Friends. Maybe they’re not the ones that you tend to hang out with on Friday nights during happy hour and discuss the rigors of the past week. But nonetheless, I’ve met people through this medium and the online community in general that I can share things with and ask about things relative to our profession or careers.
• Comments! I like comments. They give me the warm fuzzies!

I’m very excited about where my career can take me. I think I’ve waited long enough to buckle down and get something going for my professional career. The amount of knowledge is so abundant. There is no possible way to know everything. Through out our career we will meet people much smarter than we are and know more things that we coudn’t have imagined possible. And with the ever changing topology of the connected world, the increasing bandwidth with which one can reach another on the other side of the world, there is no reason to be cooked up in your room, buried in your books, and learn from such a limited medium. After all, its people that create knowledge, people discover knowledge, and people disseminate knowledge. And they are out there. Share something with the world, they are bound to share something back.