“Do things you love,” that’s what Doc G just told me during my chat with him for The RV Entrepreneur podcast. Doctor Jordan Grumet wrote The Purpose Code, and his message resonated so much with me I can’t wait to share the episode. It hasn’t dropped yet, I still need to produce it. So you have to wait to. But what he said, inspired to to celebrate small victories here today.
After I sat sweltering through our interview, I considered posting this week about how the world is upside down. No, not the idiocracy infiltrating our news feeds and thoughts. Rene has a good read recommendation for coping with that madness. But how snow fell in Florida while the Odarolac Sled Dogs have to travel to find trails suitable for running. This time last year during our first mushing experience, temperatures were in the sub thirties.
I never remember having to use the air conditioner in February, even here at FOY. But either of those topics could spark heated debate though. I don’t really love that. And it’s hot enough here.
“Do things you love.”
— DR JORDAN GRUMET
I suppose the first victory I celebrated after getting off my call, was that turning on of the A/C. I may say comfort is overrated here quite a bit, but I immediately felt a lot more comfortable with cool air flowing through our new Arctic Fox. So did Nellie. And that is something I love!
Small Victories
I’ll spare you the details about my conversation with Doc G that led me to this next celebration, and give you just the gist of it. To find and fulfill your purpose, do things you love. He started telling listeners about how I’m a perfect example – doing what I love, living the RV lifestyle, sharing those heroic stories with others…then I had to correct him. I explained how our true passion project is Tripawds.
Managing the Tripawds community is where Rene and I fulfill our purpose by combining meaning and happiness – according to the Doc G equation. This in fact, is much like the formula my previous guest Harvest Hosts CEO Joel Holland told me he lives by: Happiness = Freedom + Meaningfulness. But I digress once again. Remind me to share both those episodes once they’re live.
One Thing We Love
About these victories….they’re not that small if you ask me. One of our top priorities for 2025 was to launch the new Tripawds Support Circle. After nearly 18 years of managing the popular Tripawds forums, we needed a new community platform. Our goal was to simplify the user experience, by making it easier to share stories and photos, discover our many resources, and engage with others. We also wanted to make management and moderation much less time consuming. And, that is why we’re so glad we discovered Circle.
Building out our new community and populating it with the best of our 17+ years of content did take some time. But Circle makes it pretty simple. Within a couple weeks of launching the the new and improved Tripawds Support Circle, we have more than two hundred members joining the discussion, helping each other out, and praising the ease of use our new community platform.
Users find a safe space to engage with like-minded folks, with a familiar social feed and no intrusive algorithms or annoying ads. We love that. And, that is reason to celebrate. For anyone considering building an online community, we highly recommend you try Circle for free.
Do Things You Love Even The Big Challenges
Before launching on Circle, we had one other major challenge to overcome. We’ve been growing the Tripawds community since starting Jerry’s simple blog in 2006. Really, it’s the reason we hit the road. Today the Tripawds Foundation now hosts a network of 2,100 three legged dog and cat blogs plus numerous resources. And then, there are those monstrous massive discussion forums I mentioned. Well, this all takes some pretty robust web-hosting services.
We’ve always hosted our own dedicated server with the assistance of a dear friend and very helpful server manager. Over the years, we’ve experienced some pretty painful and rather expensive growing pains. As the site grew, performance degraded. So we’d throw more money at upgrading the box. Tripawds grew, and we’d do it again.
Every migration to a new server was very disastrous distressing. Not due to any incompetence of our server manager, mind you. But we were simply not getting the support we needed at the hardware, software, and sysadmin level. In layman’s terms, we were long overdue for finding a new host. So, I turned to the firm of which I’ve been a fan since first becoming a WPMU Dev premium member in 2008.
Enter WPMU Dev
My only regret for migrating the Tripawds network to WPMU Dev hosting is not doing it any sooner. When I first started developing the Tripawds Blogs network, I implemented many WPMU Dev plugins and themes. Eventually, their roadmap changed. Many plugins I relied upon were deprecated. They left me hanging with some outdated code and a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth. But I was still a fan.
We still used some of the core plugins they still maintain. And, I found a substitute for others, or quickly learned just enough PHP and CSS to be dangerous in developing what I needed. Perhaps with a little help from the bot as AI emerged onto the scene. When WPMU Dev announced their hosting services, I was intrigued. After all, they are the reigning expert in WordPress multisite development. And, they have always provided impressive support via live chat and expert ticketing.
All this to say, the other small victory I’m celebrating today is our successful migration of the Tripawds network to WPMU Dev. We’ve now been hosting there for a few months. All our sites are performing better than ever. And I’m pulling out much less hair. As I mentioned on LinkedIn: Migrating an enterprise site this size was tricky, but support saved the day!
Do Things You Love and Celebrate Them
Finally, the last celebration I’ll share, is the reason I posted that in the first place. Knowing that the Tripawds network migration is noteworthy, I pitched WPMU Dev on announcing our new partnership. And, this morning my inbox included this edition of their newsletter, Dev.
As I said in our Circle community, what a treat it is to see Jerry in the news. And see how the community he inspired has grown to help so many Tripawds and their people. Many thanks to WPMU Dev for keeping it online! 👍 = ❤️
So…
Do you do things you love? If you’re ever struggling to feel a sense of sanity among all the current madness, I encourage your to celebrate your victories, no matter how small they may be. Ultimately, it helps to do things you love.
Dear Jim and Rene, how long have we known each other? Since the early 90’s? Remember the laughs? Burning Man? When you made Sangria in an aluminum wash tub? You both drove up in a moving van, us in our VW Vanagon. Ahhhh the 90’s. Then you folks moved to Eureka and probably scream “Eureka” on your way in and out quite possibly? It’s true, people should do what they love and if you can’t find something to love to do then start small. Go for a walk. Be extra friendly to a waitress or waiter. Get a library card and use it, librarians are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Quote an author you respect in front of your friends. Go make some friends. Tell cool jokes. How do mermaids stay clean? Tide! There’s one for you. Laugh more debate less. Hang around people who have interesting lives and interests. Avoid ideology of any kind, most beliefs are passed down and thus worth arguing and even fighting over, let all that go. Travel overseas. Don’t discuss “what you heard” unless someone asks you “have you heard anything lately?”. Learn the Ukulele or banjo. Don’t try and change anyone but yourself. If you argue with someone who doesn’t see it your way, just say, “you might be right but what’s your favorite boxed wine at Costco for under $20?”. Oh, and always use sunscreen.
Dear wombat, if you only knew how long I’ve been waiting to hear more of your sage words of wisdom…Me? “I am what I do and I do what I can.”