I'm going to personal blog today. I've got some stuff on my mind, and few readers at this point, so I think I'm safe. Also, I think the personal has more universal applications. Hopefully, I'll get some feedback that tells me I'm right. Or wrong.

"You catch more bees with honey . . ." That's today's motto.

I've been a crab lately. That happens when you work in New England. We're a seafood people, even out here in the sticks. Winter can get you hard. And when you work in an office with one window but you have a little nook without access to that daylight (my plight), it's easy to get crustacean or snarly or both.

So that has been me lately. That's the personal part. I've been in a bad mood.

But here's the universal part. Bad moods don't work. They make work terrible. Terrible attitudes yield commensurate results.

Generally when I'm in this mode, I try to fake it. But you can only fake it so long before someone calls you on it, or it catches up to you because that sentence that you think is innocuous is unusually harsh.

Sometimes for me that plays out in the public.  I get to satisfy my fantasy of being a journalist with my monthly column in the Amherst Bulletin. In that column space, I'm occasionally ready to rumble (at least as long as it takes me to write the column). As it was in my Decemeber column, I think my corn flakes were tampered with and I was unusually grumpy: "Village Center growth is key". The feedback I got from readers was pretty mixed. Even those who agreed with me did so through pursed lips and clenched fists.

However, the following month's column: "Passing peace pipe over dinner" (we didn't smoke a pipe, by the way . . .) was one that I received some accolades for. The pats on the back for the piece were jovial and releaved. Folks happily talked to me about what I wrote this month. Much love.

What do I take from all of this? A rather simplistic, but mostly easy to follow rule: your mood dictates how your business operates. That face you put on that the world sees is tied to your success or failure. 

A few years ago, the Chamber launched its A+ Campaign, with our slogan, The Amherst Area: A Perfect Place . . . The campaign was meant to counterbalance the long prevailing view of the town as a difficult place to open, to get permitting, to do anything.

We get the occasional smirks from cynics, and have been hit with some inventive chalk graffitti next our front door, but for the most part, the campaign has corresponded with a more optimistic view of the town as a place for business. We're getting things done here because we believe we can. Optimism makes a difference.

So what do you think? Am I nuts? Are you glass half-fuller? Why?

Join me in smiles and thank yous. Tell me how it goes.