Brian Gardner

Many of you know that I recently completed the Chicago 3-Day for the Cure walk, which is a 60 mile journey to help fight breast cancer. This year was an amazing event, and you can read more about my belief that real mean wear pink if you’d like.

Now, I want to throw a few statistics at you – I currently have 7,579 Twitter followers, 946 friends on Facebook and 2911 subscribers to my blog. Am I telling you this because I want to boast and think I’m cool? Absolutely not.

Here’s the Real Reason…

I’m telling you this because chances are if you are reading this, you might fall into one (or more) of those categories above. Which means in some way you are interested in what I have to say.

Last December a friend of mine in the WordPress community helped start a journey for an amazing project. His name is Adii Pienaar, is known for creating Woo Themes, but also helped co-found the Rockstar Foundation. The Rockstar Foundation is a vibrant non profit organization, passionate about uplifting and empowering disadvantaged girls through educational grants.

I was so ridiculously impressed with the formation of this project, that I abandoned my own “giving back” project which was going to be called GivePress. As you can see, I just began development of that site, and I had a huge vision for helping the under-resourced. When the Rockstar Foundation launched, I decided to help support an existing cause that was clearly doing something special. You can read more about the “what’s” and “why’s” of my personal involvement if you’d like.

Here’s How You Can Prove You’re a WordPress Rockstar…

I am asking you to help support the Rockstar Foundation by committing to donate $10/month – and by doing so, I will personally match up to 50 people who do this. Yes, you read that correct – if (at least) 50 of you can find a way to sacrifice a few cups of Starbucks a month, together we can commit $1,000/month to a foundation that is doing such incredible things.

Just think, for every $10 you give, $20 is going to change a Rockstar girl’s life. I’m pretty sure that most of us can easily cut something out of our monthly budget to do this.

If you accept this challenge and donate, please reply to this post with a comment. I’d love to see the commitments roll in, and I think others who are considering this would love to know that we really ARE making a difference.

This morning I read a post written by Chris Brogan called The Painter and His Window. As I finished reading this parable, I found myself immediately drawn into a contemplative arena in which I sought to find the parallels between the painter and myself.

It’s funny how often our lives are seen by other people in a way that is so much different than how we see ourselves. I don’t know how to determine who’s actually seeing the truth, because our souls are so consumed with the search for significance.

To be important. To feel important. To think that others think we’re important.

I’m a firm believer that we close our windows 95% of the time – that we fail to allow others to look in not nearly as much as we should. We have beauty. We paint beautifully. We are beautiful people. But we tragically make the mis-diagnosis that we’re unworthy in the eyes of others.

So we paint pictures that we think other people want to look at. We use colors that we feel others want to see, and deliberately go out of our way to appease them.

How many songs have you written that remain unheard? How many times have you crumpled up the sketch that others did not see?

I can tell you from personal experience that there is an infinite amount of themes that have not made it to the StudioPress website. Ones that I felt would not have been liked by others, so they ended up where so many of my creative works end up.

Behind a closed window. For no one to see. Ever.

I deeply encourage you, like Chris did, to open up your window for others to look into. You might meet some interesting people. More importantly, you might discover yourself while it’s open.