Sharon, Where Have You Been?

Everywhere I go online these days, people are asking where I’ve been. I didn’t think I had been that absent, but then I looked at my blog’s archives. Last January I posted 24 times; in November, that was down to 2. Shocking, I admit it freely. That absence was mirrored on many of the social sites I call home. So what happened? Lots of things.

What I’ve Been Doing

I was working on a course which took up a lot of my time. I’ve now put that on hold for the time being and am thinking of using that information in a different way in the New Year.

I started a corporate blogging job in September — just a couple of posts a week, but I am also building up the company’s social networking presence, (to the detriment of my own, as it turns out). That’s another area where a lot of the ground work has now been done.

I was hired to work as a journalist for a couple of online trade magazines. Most of it is providing news, but some of it means interviewing people in different time zones. (I discovered that it’s difficult to interview someone in Dubai when there’s an eight hour time difference.)

The Aftermath

I didn’t take a holiday, got tired and had to take a break from some of my online activities to keep my head from exploding. For a couple of weeks I didn’t read feeds or do much else but the essential client work. I put some of my social stuff on autopilot and posted occasionally, but was nowhere near as present as I had been during the summer. The short break did me good and some of you will have spotted me here and there in the last couple of days.

Where Do I Go From Here?

Now I’m feeling reenergized. I’ll be spending time with my family over the holidays and will also make some plans for the coming year. I’ll be thinking about how frequently I post on this blog (more than the last couple of months, but probably less than in January 2008), reviewing where I spend my social time online (much as I love trying new sites, I can’t keep up with 20+ sites) and streamlining my writing business (I haven’t decided how yet, but I need to set some priorities and work towards those).

BTW, as I was catching up on my feeds in between writing a couple of paragraphs, I found a great post related to this on Men with Pens. It’s called Balancing Work and Work.