The Fearless Blogger

Warning:
This contents of this blog post are incredibly self-indulgent and there’s a good chance they may even be boring.  Read at your own risk!

Been doing a bit of thinking about this blog lately.  I’ve been busy helping others with their blogs, and a bit like the cobbler whose kids have no shoes (or whatever that saying is!) I’ve been neglecting my own.  And I miss it.

I have some changes in mind, so thought I’d take a moment (or twenty) to share them.  In a sense, this post is me sticking with an approach of transparency, in another sense it’s a bit of a brain dump. More honestly, I’m hoping that putting this into a blog post will be a bit of an affirmation, to make sure I get on the ball and back to being a blogger.

To those of you who’ve been regular readers, commenters, subscribers and friends (both online and “IRL”), thank you for joining me and staying along for the ride thus far.  Hopefully these changes keep you coming back for more.  Ultimately, I’m just trying to find ways to make sure I’m keeping this blog true to me – which is the only way I feel I can live up to the “fearless” domain name I’m inhabiting.

Topics
I love pop culture, creativity and technology. Social media and web design each morph those topics into their own flavors which fascinate me.  There’s such a glut social media “gurus” and Twitter is fast becoming the third Olsen twin with its glut of media (over)exposure, I’ve felt a bit lame writing about it.

My current obsession is WordPress – however most posts related to WordPress will reside in the future URLuscious blog, so that those customers have a central location to find focused, pertinent content.  That said, WordPress’s licensing model has had me thinking about the open source community, so expect to see some related blog posts in the future.

I am planning on bringing back Inside the Blogger’s Studio.  After a big fat apology to the folks who’ve been waiting to see their responses posted, I’m hoping to transition to a video format.

Nothing over-the-top different. Except, maybe a couple of things.

I’m thinking of writing some personal essays.  I don’t want to turn this into a cat blog (although I love my cats!) – but I’m wanting to inject more “me” into the blog.  Depending on the time of month, these may be rants; depending on the time of night, they may be musings.  But they’ll be personal.  Fearless.

I’m also toying of writing some short fiction.  Or perhaps masquerading some personal essays and anecdotes as fiction to protect the not-so-innocent.

And I’m going to share what I’m working on.  I don’t use this blog to sell myself or my services, because I respect my readers too much to shamelessly plug myself.  That said, my guess is many of you don’t know what services I’d even be selling; which is doing myself a bit of a disservice (Hint: if you need website hosting or design, feel free to contact me!).

How this effects you:
Well, it depends on why you read The Fearless Blogger.  I’m not making any promises – but expect to find a more eclectic mix of topics.  You’ll also likely see me brush off and publish some of those draft posts soon.  Hopefully you’ll like most, and stick around to read more.   Either way, please feel free to share your feedback with me!

photo credit: dawn perry

Content
Back before I had a blog, I yearned for a central place to share the cool stuff I encountered online. That is what I envisioned my blog to be.

With Twitter, Facebook and sites like Tumblr, making it so easy to quickly share links and articles, I’ve shied away from using the Fearless Blogger as a link repository – opting to limit sharing to those other avenues, unless I feel I have something pertinent to add to the link.

There are two issues with this that I’m wanting to fix.  First, rather than stay true to my goal of having a centralized home on the internet – a “one stop shop” for all that is me – I’m feeling a bit “diluted”.

Second, it takes me a long time to write a blog post.  A combination of hyper-focus during the writing process and Murphy’s Law conspiring with WordPress quirks, browser “features” and network glitches, generally translates into my five minute post taking up at least a couple of hours.  So, the desire to make sure I’ve added a bit of me to any posts has resulted in an accumulation of blog posts, gathering dust, and possibly well past their shelf lives.  It also means what I planned to share often gets lost in my tendency towards – ahem – verbose blog posts.

So, I’m toying with ways to share my information here, while accomplishing this following:

1. simple
2. quick
3. interesting
4. the RSS feed is only filled with quality content
5. accessible (e.g., searchable and/or indexed archives)
6. maintains a consistent look/feel

This can all be accomplished with WordPress, it’s just a matter of me figuring out how I want to approach it.

What this means to you:
Possibly some road bumps as I feel my way through adding content, changing categories, etc. Hopefully there won’t be a glut in duplicate content or an overload of RSS emails.  If there is, please accept my apologies in advance and do me one favor:  Drop me a line before you go, so I can incorporate your feedback to make this blog better.

Layout/Theme
I’ve recently been helping folks with Thesis theme customizations.  I’m a fan of Thesis for a number of reasons (which could – and likely will – be a blog post on its own), and would like to grow this area of my consulting services.  I’m a big believer in “walking the talk” (or “walking the walk“, for English language sticklers!).  Buying this theme served the purpose of getting a novice blogger up and running, but I’d like to be able to include my own blog in my portfolio.  So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be porting this design over to Thesis.

What this means to you:
Hopefully not much, other than a blog that’s cross-browser compatible and loads quickly, plus a more cohesive color scheme and consistent typeface!

Bottom Line
All of these are to make this blog better for me, which should hopefully translate to better for you.  Thanks for letting me indulge in outlining my goals here.  I’d love any feedback or ideas – feel free to share them in the comments!

(Note: Thesis and ThemeForest links are affiliate links)

 Link to this page

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