- Robert C. Gallagher
My post on December 4th talked about my evolution as a blogger. But what it really looked at was the visual evolution of the design of my blog. Although I talked a little bit in there about how my tone has gotten more conversational, really my main focus was to show how I've tried out different blog templates (kind of how teenagers try on different personalities). I still don't think I'm done changing the way my blog looks, so don't be surprised if you check back in and it looks different again...
What about the main topic of my blog? When I first started, I envisioned I'd be writing mostly about women in technology because that's kind of a pet project of mine. Well, if you read my posts, I've tried to go back to that topic every so often, but somehow, I keep getting sidetracked. And isn't that kind of how life works? We start out down one road or one thought process and we find ourselves on some detour.
That's not to say that the detours aren't beneficial. Sometimes you discover new places (or new things about yourself) by taking a detour. In my last posting, I described stepping outside of my comfort zone to design a social media strategy for defero. When I started this blog in September, I never dreamed I'd be blogging about something like that! Or about the Z pattern in eye movements, for that matter. But even though I've wandered around a bit in terms of topics, you can still get a good sense of who I am by reading my posts.
When I first started writing my blog, I tended to write in a formal tone because that's what I was used to doing in my job. But I've tried to relax a bit, and now I try to write my postings as if I'm writing an e-mail to a friend, not posting thoughts to a blog for public consumption. I hope you've noticed and enjoyed the difference.
I've also gone back and forth with being worried about the length of my blog postings. At first, I tried to make sure I covered every point I wanted to make, but then my postings got a little long. So the next few postings got short - maybe even too short - as I tried to really cut back on what I wrote to keep the postings to a reasonable length. Now I've gotten to the point where I'm confident enough to write what I want to say and not worry so much about the length of the posting.
So where do I (and my blog) go from here? I hope to get back more to my topic of interest: trying to encourage girls to pursue careers in science and technology and discussing why women so frequently drop out of those careers. But like my title says, life happens, and who knows where the next detour will lead me? Or, as one of my favorite poems from The Lord of the Rings says:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
- J. R. R. Tolkien
Illustration copied without permission from www.coldal.org/quotes.html
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