Blogging: knowing when enough's enough

Warning Will Robinson: there are a lot of words in this post. 876. It took me a while to write them and it might take you a while to read. I found the 'writing down' very helpful. Perhaps you might find something in this post for you too...I hope so. I've thrown in some pictures as well...consider this a de facto top ten or so for this week :)

I said that I was going to do some navel gazing over this long combined Easter/Anzac break. And I did. I also told you that I would have a cunning plan by the end of it...a plan to transform my life into some sort of organised miracle. And I tried that too. Much more difficult than the navel gazing bit!
In my 'real life' I'm a consultant. I'm not too bad at it. So I attempted to put my consulting skills to work on me, instead of some poor unsuspecting client. It appears that I'm a difficult customer... as the 22 year old will no doubt confirm!

Heaven forbid that I give away my trade secrets, but suffice to say I asked myself a lot of questions. I probed. I poked. I suggested alternatives. I asked myself why, what was important, what was stopping me, what was supporting me, what was giving pleasure, what should I start doing/stop doing/change, where were the frustrations...were they worth it? On and on I went...for most of the long weekend. I was a pain in my own butt!
One of the things I try to do in my work is help people see through the complexity of the issue they're dealing with to the simplicity on the other side. It's almost always there somewhere. So that's what I tried to do for myself. I got clear...well, pretty clear. And I decided that I have four areas of focus (loved ones and paid work aside). 
Four discretionary areas of focus if you like. I'm not going to give you the details (you'll probably see some of them emerge over time anyway) but I will say that two are creative, one is about health and one is financial. And I'm very comfortable with them. I could have had a heap more but I thought it was important to set some sort of limit...simplicity remember!

What I will share with you is this. Having found my areas of focus, I now have two questions I can use to keep me...well, focused. And they are: 
"is doing this/spending time or money on this/investing your effort in this going to have a positive impact on one or more of those four foci Kez?" 
(ok, I don't actually say foci...who would!!) AND...here's the second question kicker...
"will it enrich your life or someone else's in the process?" 
Except in the case of the financial focus...because if it's enriching someone or something else external to my life, (especially a bank) and it's not enriching me as well...then that's a big no- no!
So you're probably wondering what's all this got to do with blogging and the title of this post? It's this. I've been blogging for a bit over a year now. It's been a fabulous thing to do. It's introduced me to new things, masses of ideas, made me laugh and sometimes cry, shown me that I can do some things, and not others...and most importantly helped me find lovely people who weren't in my life before this experience began.

But it takes up so much time. If I were to add up all the hours I've spent composing blog posts, thinking about posts, rewriting blog posts, reading other people's blog posts, 'cutting and pasting' beautiful pictures to put into blog posts, squirreling away ideas for things to make, projects to attempt....well, let's just say that I could probably point to a few 'lost' weeks, or more. 
So I asked myself those two questions. Does blogging have a positive impact on one or more of my areas of focus and does it enrich my life? The answer was yes...and no.
It really does take up too much time, when time is one of those increasingly precious and rare commodities...especially now that I'm back working full time. It does actually steal time from other things that are important to me...especially now that I have that focus. And sometimes you just have to wise up. So I'm not going to stop, but I am going to cut back.  I'm not entirely sure how...as we all know it can be slightly addictive...but I know I have to. So there'll be fewer posts and possibly, unfortunately, fewer comments on your posts. I will keep commenting I promise, I think that's a really important thing to do, but it's not going to be as frequently as I'd like, and certainly not every day. I'm going to restrict my blogging activity to some set times...not sure what they are yet. So if you don't hear from me as much as you used to...it's not personal. Well, it is...but not in that way. It's about me taking control of 'my personal'. 

So there you go. That's where I'm at. Extra long weekend well spent? I think so :)
first image: chasing satellites; others from weheartit