Some of you may have noticed that it’s been really quiet on the blogging front – at least on my own blog for a while now.  Well, that’s because change has been afoot and I’ve been working through getting in the swing of things.  To some extent, those changes tapped my creativity  and there just wasn’t enough left over for myself- probably should have mentioned that earlier… but it’s always easier to Monday-morning quarterback life, isn’t it?

So, on to the main event – here’s the changes:

1. Summer Vacation – everyone needs one, including me.  I loaded up my summer posts for the other blogs I write for and then called  myself done.  Through August… and I mostly held to that.  I wanted to take some time to not only just “chill” but to really listen to what was going on in the world around me – not just catching snippets of topics to make a new article deadline or hit on a salacious blog.  It was good for me and I highly recommend everyone take time to do so.
2. New Outlets – I took on writing for several new publications and blogging outlets over the past few months and at some point, even I ran out of things to say!  In the end, I assessed the different blogs/publications I’m writing for and cut the ones that don’t fit my niche anymore.  You’ll see me on fewer outlets, but they’ll be much higher traffic – so, I think it balances out?
3. New Strategy – New outlets coincide with a new strategy on what I’d be writing about that was more tightly aligned with my professional focus & to a lesser degree, what I wanted to share personally.  I -love- writing about life as a single chick in Dallas and being a parent… that’s not going to totally go away… but here’s the reality:  the older you [I] get, the more … quirky (1)… some of the guys I run into are.  This makes for HILARIOUS stories, but many are not quite fit-to-print.  At least not on the same blog my prospective clients haunt because there’s a shocking number of people who just don’t have social graces and many seem to be single and dating in DFW.  #nowyouknow  I don’t have the time for a stand-alone dating blog so there’s likely to be fewer of those stand-alone posts for now.. at least until a pocket of ‘normal’ resurfaces!
4. We Moved – I’d been planning a move for quite some time and after a false-start with a rather unscrupulous couple who didn’t honor our real estate agreement, we finally found our new home… and just moved into it last week.  With every move, I purge a lot of stuff – but it still seems like I have an excessive amount of ‘history’ that I lug around from house to home.  This appears to be hereditary as my children both seem to do it, too.  My eldest daughter had more boxes for her room than I do mine!  It’s got me thinking on the sentimentality we attach to ‘stuff;’ is there a correlation to work and projects there, too?  I think there might be.
5. Work – Not sure about everyone else, but third quarter ALWAYS seems to be my busiest time of year… it’s been ridiculously busy and since a lot of what I do requires creative thinking?  The clients are getting it first… and then throw in conference season?  There’s been little time to do much else!

I have gotten into a good rhythm of things and there is more time to make my own blog a top 5 priority again. Vacation is over, school has started and I’m completely back to work.  Coming up, I’m headed out to Atlanta for mRecruitingcamp for a second year. I expect there will be a LOT I’ll want to talk about before, during, and after…. so, thanks for giving me time to get back in the swing of things and stay tuned!

(1) Read:  Seriously damaged