April Hiatus

I am suspending my blog activities for the month of April.

The first reason I am taking a break from the blog is purely logistics.  My fiscal year end at work is during the month of April.  I always struggle to write blogs on time during my quarters, and year end is the worst quarter of them all.  When I look back at last April, my blogs were either “I do not have time for this” blogs or short postings just to get something up.  This year is likely be just as busy, if not worse, because of continuing staffing issues.  I have decided to just say now there will be no blogs during the month.  This way, I do not feel pressure to write some nonsense just to get a blog posted, and you do not feel disappointed if you were actually expecting a real blog.

The second reason I am taking some time away is to reevaluate having a blog.  I question whether I really want to continue to do it.  One of the reasons I started to write the blog was to practice my writing and to encourage a creative writing habit.  I have (mostly) kept up with the weekly posts, but I am not sure the blog really pushes me to do more than that.  Although I am proud of how long I have kept at it, I am not necessarily proud of some of my postings.  There are a number of hastily written posts that do not showcase my best quality.  Maybe if I stop the blog, I can redirect the energy into other writing.  Then again, I just might not write anything at all ever.  Since I struggle with the time commitment and quality performance though, maybe writing is not where I should focus my energies at this point in my life.

If I do decide to continue the blog, I think I need to refocus it.  It was never my intent to focus on a specific subject, because I really do not see myself as a subject matter expert on anything.  However, I think sometimes I have veered into topics that might not necessarily be the best fit for me.  It might help me to be a better blogger if I narrow my focus to a few areas that feel more natural to me.  In my offline life, I am learning to be more true to myself and to discover the things that are fun and exciting to me.  It would be a natural move for me let my blog reflect these areas of interest.  As such, I would probably be writing more about reading and hiking, and less about fashion and decorating.

Lastly, I have never created much of a blog following.  I have not picked up more than about 20 hits per post and I am pretty sure some, if not all, of that is search engine bots cataloging my work.  I am not complaining about the number of readers I have.  Gathering a huge readership was never one of my top priorities, and really I did little to try to market my blog to others.  Instead, I am indicating that ending my blog would probably have little effect on anyone other than myself.  If you do happen to read my blog, do you want me to continue?  Do you have any suggestions or tips on things you like or do not like about my postings?  If I do decide to continue, I am certainly open to advice on how to improve my work.

I will not see you next week, but maybe I will see you in a month.