(Image source: i can has cheezburger)

I’m back a little earlier than May as promised.  The wedding was absolutely wonderful I’m glad to report and I’m now a very happily married wife.

Now it’s back to business!

(CC Licenced image source (and cake baked by): basykes)

I have a very important appointment coming up very soon - I’m getting married! I’m so totally excited about it BUT there’s still a lot to organise… so in order to fully focus on this major milestone in my life, I’ll be taking some time off as holiday from the blog.

See you back at the beginning of May when all the fuss has calmed down and it’s back to business!

Cat

I’ve been really bad, I broke one of the golden rule of blogging - Never have unexplained absences from your blog!

I have plenty of excuses: first there was Christmas and I’m the main family cook and organiser; then I had a 450+ page manuscript to edit; I’ve also gone back to university to do a postgraduate degree and so I’ve had a number of assignments; there were some work jobs that popped up that were of the “can you get this done by yesterday?” variety and on top of all this I have a wedding in a couple of months!

But I often wonder when a task doesn’t get done whether there’s some underlying reason to the procrastination. There’s a nice tip from the Happiness Blog (which we’ve featured in our blog showcase) - Gretchen Rubin reminds us to “Identify the Problem“. While she gives the example of a physical annoyance (too much light in her home office), this rule can apply to any sort of blockage. So when I realised that almost a month had gone by without a post I thought that there was probably something else going on subconsciously.

It was a good time for a blog review anyway, and sure enough I found there were a few things that were putting me off blogging.  I had  got into a blogging rut and because most of the past posts have been tutorial based, I sort of stuck myself in a neutral voice. I realised that I really wanted to be a lot more personal and direct in my blog writing. So that’s the first goal.

I also found that my goals for blog post production where just not realistic with my life. I’m actually quite a slow writer because I tend to mull over my words a lot and I try to give a lot of thought to my postings. I definitely don’t want the latter to change so I’m not going to start dashing off quick posts just for the sake of getting lots of regular content out there. I think that works with some blogs, and some topics it’s absolutely necessary to have daily posts. I don’t think it is absolutely necessary for this blog. I found having a requirement to post multiple posts a week ended up with me falling behind and well, just not loving blogging as much as I usually do. So my initial goal is to post once a week but I can post more if I want to (for example, this week is likely to have a few extra posts!). If you like what you see here, then the most efficient way to keep up is to subscribe which if you choose the email route will also get you my next commitment: a newsletter at least once a month (with surprise goodies for subscribers).

I’m also going to allow myself to experiment a little and be more spontaneous with postings on this blog to see what I gravitate towards. I’m probably going to steer away from the extended series (I’ve already done two that have gone for at least a month), instead I’ll be looking to create more shorter sharper hits of value for you.

So to sum up, my goals for my blog are:

• be a lot more personal and direct in my blog writing
• post once a week
• create a newsletter at least once a month
• experiment a little and be more spontaneous
• create shorter sharper hits of value

I know it’s going to be an exciting year!