As 2007 draws to a close we naturally look back on the year that’s gone by and forward to what we want to achieve in the year ahead.  I’ve been doing some of that too.  I’ve got bundles of ideas that I want to take forward as part of my writing coach work and I know that I need and want to make this the priority for 2008. 

This has consequences for my time spent blogging.  Even for a prolific blogger like me I can’t maintain my Confident Writing site, guest write at four other blogs and give Coaching Wizardry its fair share of attention.  So I’ve decided that this – the 150th post – will be the last live update here. 

I’m going to maintain the site as an archive because there are lots of gems contained within it, and I hope people will continue to enjoy exploring it in the months and years to come.  I’ve been doing a bit of work dusting down the archives and will post a few ‘best of’ pieces in the next day or so to make it easy for new readers and visitors to find their way around.

But I couldn’t close this particular chapter without a huge thanks to all of you.  This is the site where I started blogging – and caught the blogging bug as a result of the huge amount of support, encouragement and feedback that I got from all of you.  It meant a huge amount to me, and I treasure the blogging friendships that have emerged through our conversations and exchanges here.

If you want to keep in touch please do come over and join me at Confident Writing – I will continue to blog with a passion and a fury there.

For now though I all I can say is thanks.  Sincerely, thanks.

Joanna

And it wouldn’t do to close without a thanks to Erik Kastner for the fantastic spell with flickr service – and thanks to Rosa for pointing me towards it.          

The words were from Douglas Adams and this is what he said:

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

It reminded me that we often find ourselves places that we didn’t mean to go – and that’s okay.  It doesn’t mean we need to head back again – perhaps we just need to stop and enjoy the view, explore the paths that head off from here, or just accept that this is where we were ‘meant’ to get to in the first place.

I’ve been reflecting since my holiday on where I was going with my writing, coaching, and blogging.  The conclusion I’ve reached is that I want to focus on my work as a writing coach, and writing (and blogging) about writing with confidence.  I don’t think it’s possible (or sensible) to put equal effort into two different ways of writing (and coaching, learning, teaching and blogging).  You end up splitting your focus and attention, and reducing the quality of – and your enjoyment in – both.

So from here on I’m going to make the main focus of my work the Confident Writing blog.

It’s going from strength to strength (I think!) and I’d love to see you over there if you haven’t visited before.  Just click the link…

This shift in focus means writing less here, but continuing to develop it as a site:

Where I share some of my own more reflective writing. It’s a place to explore what happens when we start playing with language, and possibilities. A place to daydream. A place to share words and ideas inspired by stories, metaphors, pictures, films, music, nature, each other. The best learning comes when we share our stories together so please feel free to read, to explore, to add a comment, to explore new possibilities and conjure up new realities…

Thanks for all your support so far – I’ve learned so much from the connections that have already flowed from our exchanges here.  Although I’ll be posting less you should expect to see many of the same themes and aims as before, so I hope you’ll carry on visiting, and reading, and sharing your own thoughts, words, learning and stories.

Robyn McMaster at Brain Based Biz is one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking bloggers out there (her blog is full of the most amazing material on the workings of the brain) so I was surprised and honoured to find that she had named me for the Thinking Blogger Awards. 

I’m one of five that she’s listed – the others are Word Sell, Branding and Marketing, Own Your Brand and Design Your Writing Life. I’m familiar with Word Sell (a great read) but not the others – so more to add to my list of reading material (= brain food).

The challenge is then to come up with your own list of five nominations: the blogs that really make you think.  It’s hard, because each one gives you something (else why would you read it?).  But there are some that really do give my brain a good workout – and here they are:

1. Roger von Oech at Creative Think, whose questions, prompts and challenges get you thinking creatively

2. Anna Farmery at The Engaging Brand, who gets you thinking about leadership – of teams but also of yourself – in a very natural way, using stories and anecdotes from everyday life

3. Hilda Carroll at Living Out Loud, who gets us thinking about our ability to be happy right now.

4. Liz Strauss at Successful Blog who gets me thinking about how to use great questions to stimulate conversation, and to help us to get to know who we are

5. Rosa Say at Managing with Aloha, who has started me thinking about the values of aloha and how to apply them in my life.  The start of an amazing journey of discovery.

Robyn’s blog, I hasten to add, would be on the list had she not already been tagged…

If you don’t already know these blogs why not dip into them and give them try.  I guarantee you’ll get some interesting and unusual food for thought.

Here are the participation rules for the Thinking Blogger Award:

    1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
    2. Link back to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
    3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ (I know you’ll want to!)

Even if blogging has peaked, the plateau ahead is wide and far. The participation and conversation is just getting started.

I buy that argument. In fact I’m so taken with my first few weeks of blogging that I’ve decided to set up another site.  Yes, a new blogsite Confident Writing: coaching tips from a writing coach has just been born.  It gives me the space to put all my material on writing with confidence over there, leaving this site with the focus on coaching and stories, which seems to be what people are enjoying so far

The site is a bit simpler in design than this one – I did it pretty much by myself so fingers crossed there aren’t too many technical glitches – though it was very much inspired by the fantastic tuition I got from my Business Blog Angel Claire.  Her site quotes the saying  "teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" and that is her approach all over – she doesn’t just build you a site but passes on the skills, the techniques and the confidence to go forth and blog-multiply!

Anyway, I’m feeling really good about having the two sites and the chance to develop a distinct identity for both.  I just hope I don’t end up spending too much time blogging at the expense of other things, or developing a split personality.

If you’ve got a moment you could call by the site and have a look, leave your picture (you MyBlogLoggers) or post a comment…

Meantime, any advice from experienced blog writers on the joys and challenges of managing multiple blogs?