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Hiatus

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As I mentioned last week - I'm in need of a break. And I think, for my sanity, it's worth taking a break from this blog, too.

Expect little or no activity here for the next ten days - and see you the other side, hopefully revived and refreshed. ;-)
One of the "joys" of living in the social media world is those days that you wake up, and discover your e-mail in-box crammed with something - comments on one of your posts, Twitter follows or, as happened this morning, a metric ton of new followers on Typepad, where I run a small handful of blogs. The venerable hosted blogging platform has been going through a major reinvention over the last year, integrating social networking with its base platform, to make blogging a more social activity. If this seems familiar, it's because it's been baked into newer platforms like Tumblr and Posterous from the very start. Even WordPress is bringing BuddyPress, its social networking addon, closer and closer to the core of the product.

Right down the bottom of the overnight e-mails was the explanation: I'd been added to the Typepad Bloggers Directory by one of the team, as a pick of the week:

Me in the Typepad Directory
And that leads me to two thoughts:

  1. My worries some months back about blog platform innovation slowing were unfounded. All of the platforms I listed above are adding features at a rapid clip.
  2. This is the year when social networks and blogs are going to merge very deeply indeed - and any publisher would be unwise to ignore this.
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The Problem With...

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...turning something you love as a hobby into your job, is that sometimes it leaves you no time to do the thing you love.

And the problem with that, is you can start to lose your passion, to forget why you did this in the first place.

Note to self: blog more. 
Sad Tree
Christmas is finally, irrevocably over. I have taken down the Christmas cards and decorations at home, and am back in the office, with a denuded and forlorn looking tree (right). 

And that means my self-imposed social media diet is over. I've made tentative first passes at both my feed readers and my e-mail, and hope to be down to In-Box Zero by tomorrow afternoon. 

But I'm not pressuring myself. I made some mistakes last year - I took on too much, I didn't find enough time for myself and I certainly didn't take my alloted amount of holiday. Not this year. I've had a very clear warning in the shape of a couple of friends who burnt-out completely last year, with time off work and medical intervention to recover. I'm not walking that path, and so I'm making some changes:

  • Stop using my in-box as a to-do list. Maintain in-box zero and capture tasks elsewhere.
  • Read more. Last year I was so busy doing that I almost stopped consuming information. This year I'm going to spend more time in my feed readers, and in books and magazines. Reading is an integral part of blogging and I need to make it a regular (and guilt-free) part of my routine. 
  • Write more. The corollary of the above. Too many blog posts of all stripes went unwritten last year because they weren't "urgent". I'm one of those people who can best define their thinking by writing it out. I need to do this more.
  • Take some breaks from the office. In recent years I've slipped into the habit of being in the office from dawn to dusk. Compare that with this blog in 2004, when it was full of photos and observations from lunchtime walks. I need the break, the exercise and the thinking space. 
I'm trying not to think of these as New Years' Resolutions as much as lifestyle changes I want to implement. Let's see how it goes...

Happy New Year, all. 

Carols in October

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I was working a little late this evening, and I heard the strangest thing (for October). I grabbed it as best as I could on the iPhone:

 

I'm guessing that one of the other firms in the building has a choir, which is getting in some practice nice at early.
Thanks to the MadMen Yourself site, this is what I might have looked like teaching on one of RBI's training courses back in the 1960s...
  MadMen Adam
[Blame: Alison Battisby, via Twitter]
Action Adam
It's that time of the year.

Yes, I'm taking a week off from work, and off from this blog, too. It's time for me to put down the laptop, pull on my walking boots and recharge my batteries in the countryside.

And, just as I did back in April, I've lined up a series of guest posters to keep you entertained until I get back.

I hope you find what the guest posters have to say provoking, and I'll see you back here in a week.

(Although, you might find some blog action from me over here...)
Another blast from the VHS past: here's a clip from a 1992 episode of Kilroy, featuring me in my student union activist days, opining about graduate unemployment:

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