I was sick a couple weeks ago.

This was probably one of the top 5 all time worst sicknesses of my life. The reigning champion of sicknesses in my life goes to a severe lung illness I picked up from some Australians I was hanging out with in Ireland. I’m pretty sure I almost died that time.

But just the same, this was bad.

This has symbolism for me because of this whole Reset concept we are hearing about.

Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive recently gave a speech at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

He was quoted as saying:

“I don’t think we are in a recession, I think we have reset,” he said. “A recession implies recovery [to pre-recession levels] and for planning purposes I don’t think we will. We have reset and won’t rebound and re-grow.”

On one hand I think that’s a bit apocalyptic. On the other hand there is optimism in that statement.

He is saying we are entering our new world. Or even more encouraging, we are already in our new world.

His statement is shrouded in negativity and disappointment. But the way I see it is, I’m excited about working with what we have.

Even forest fires restore ecosystems and prevent larger wildfires from raging out of control.

There is little point at looking back at what used to be. We all need to look at today and what is possible.

To put it mildly, 2009 was not the year I planned for mid-2008.

We doubled our space. We increased our staff. Everything was projected to grow at a fast, exciting clip.

That didn’t happen. Everything shrunk.

We had layoffs. The extra office space is mostly unused. It all slowed down.

But today I am nothing but excited.

While the team is smaller at SageRock, it’s also leaner, smarter and more innovative.

This whole “reset” has given us the opportunity to ask ourselves, “who do we want to be?”

We are re-examining our vision, what our point of existence is and what we want to achieve.

While I’ll be putting out more detailed information on this transformation, in short, we are leaders in the web marketing industry. We lead this industry on driving new thoughts, driving new implementations and driving the very definition of what it means to be a web marketer.

Those are our strengths. Those strengths are what we will focus on.

I can’t help but be excited about that prospect.

Photo from: Hope_in_a_better_future on Flickr – Photo Sharing!