Happy New Year!

It's me again. It's been just over a month since my last post, in which time I finished grad school and completed my Master's degree, celebrated Christmas with my family and friends, and, of course, worked.

I'm heading out soon to spend some more time with my immediate family and other relatives, but I wanted to pop in to wish you a Happy New Year and to thank you for reading this blog, if you by some chance happen to read it. I don't really do New Year's resolutions anymore, but I have three goals for blogging in 2011:

1) Blog more;

2) Not announce that I will write about something until I actually do it;

3) Figure out my long-term plans with my other neglected blog, Hired Minds.

We'll see which of these I actually stick to. :) Have a safe and fun NYE, and as the tired joke goes, see you next year!

Cobwebs

Just a quick note to wish anyone reading this a Happy Thanksgiving, and to let you know that I'm still here, just very busy. I have about two and a half weeks of class left until I have earned my Master's degree, so it's crunch time there along with work and my standard home and family obligations. As such I probably won't update this again until sometime in the second half of next month. I miss writing here, though, and am looking forward to getting the chance to do more. Not too much longer...

Oh, and this is the 50th post on this blog. So there's that milestone too.

Dusting Off the Blog

Apologies for the lack of posting in the past few weeks. I wouldn't say I've been particularly busy, just that I haven't thought to write anything here recently. I have class starting in a little over a week (my last semester of graduate school, assuming all goes according to plan), so I'm not sure how frequently I will be posting through the end of the year, but I will try to get something up at least once in a while.

The funny thing is, I often have good ideas for posts when I'm somewhere where writing one isn't possible (at work, on the bus, etc). I guess I need to do a better job of capturing those thoughts and expanding on them when I'm at home where I can write.

Interesting Statistic

Technically, I crossed this threshold several entries back, but I was pleased to see that I now have more posts for 2010 so far than all of 2008 and 2009 combined. Though admittedly, 2009 only had one entry, since last year I was focusing on my other blog to the detriment of this one.

If I can keep up my current posting rate, I should be able to double this in only a couple more months, even if I don't write when I'm gone on vacation next month (more on that in a later post). Go me!

Bonus Post: Scheduling

I've decided on a posting frequency schedule for my two blogs in order to establish some regularity and encourage myself to post consistently. As of today, this blog will be updated on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Hired Minds, my other blog (there's a link over there on the right; this is a fast post and I'm being lazy) will get new content on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. There may be occasional "bonus posts" like this one where I post on a non-scheduled day or multiple times in one day for a special reason. But otherwise, I will do my very best to keep to that schedule, and to that end I've already written the next post for both this blog and HM. So now I just need to think of something for Wednesday and Thursday...

A Name Change

I've finally settled on a new name for this blog, which you can see at the top of the page.

I got the idea for this last week when, after finishing my Imperial Platter from Leann Chin (bourbon chicken and cream cheese puffs with fried rice, my standard), I unwrapped my fortune cookie and broke it apart to read the fortune.

Except, the fortune was blank. Just a strip of paper with nothing on it.

At first, I thought this was just funny, but then I realized that, if I reeaally wanted to read way, way more into this than is warranted, I could interpret this as a sign meaning that my fortune is in fact blank, and that I can write my own. Now, I don't actually believe in signs like this, so in fact this is more of a reminder of something I already knew rather than a deep revelation.

But hey, I like the name, and I think it's a neat story. So there you go.

Reboot

So, it's been well over a year since I last updated this blog. As such, I've decided to reboot it and take it in a new direction. Rather than just focusing on writing, it's going to be a general-purpose blog where I talk about whatever I feel like at the moment. Writing will certainly be a large part of it, but it could also include everything from book reviews to interesting pictures I take. I think it will be easier for me to commit to a blog if I don't pressure myself to keep a particular theme all the time.

I may change the name; I'm not sure about that yet. And I will also include a blogroll that links to whatever I happen to find interesting and worth a read. Eventually I may even move this to another host, but I'm not sure on that yet.

A Bit of Cross-Promotion

Happy 2009! A few days ago, I started the second blog that I'd alluded to previously. It's called Hired Minds, and it's about consultants, contractors, temps, and other "hired guns" that companies hire to help them with their business needs. You can check it out here.

It's not a replacement for this blog by any means; I'm still going to post here when I have something to post, though I expect that I will be posting more often at Hired Minds for a little while.

Testing

Is this thing on?