You may have noticed it’s been a little quiet around here lately. TheVanBlog has become something of ghost town (or maybe it’s a ghost blog) in recent weeks. Other things have kept me from writing, which I’ll get to momentarily, but first I’ll put the offer out for guest posts. If you’re interested in writing a post here send me an email.
photo credit: lemonjenny
If you need a reminder about how guest blogging can benefit your blog you can revisit these posts.
- Grow Your Blog By Giving Away Your Content
- Your Content On Another Blog May Be The Key To Your Success
You can also check out how guest blogging here and other places helped James grow his blog a few months back.
And if you decide to write a guest post here or elsewhere you can learn how to increase the return on your investment.
Computer Problems And A New Laptop
It’s somewhat lame to tell you the reason I haven’t been blogging regularly the last month or so is that I’ve been busy, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I’ll offer some more detail in the hopes of making the excuse a little less lame.
A month ago today, just after hitting the button to publish this post about how to highlight the current page in wordPress, my laptop decided it was a good time to shut down permanently. If you remember about a year ago the same thing happened to the same laptop.
This time it was the motherboard that failed and unlike last year the warranty had expired. Oddly I didn’t panic. The laptop that died was close to four years old and I had been wanting a new one anyway. Seemed like a good time.
I decided it was time for a change and bought a MacbookPro. I had been thinking of making the switch last year and despite a few reservations was convinced it was the right move in part by this post from Dan Thies. Dan, if you find your way here, thanks.
I won’t go into all the details of switching to a Mac in this post. (if you’re interested in my switch to a Mac, leave me a comment and maybe I’ll write about my experience in a future post). I will say I’m happy I switched and that changing to a new OS did keep me from being productive for a few days. That’s when the busyness started.
Work, Work And More Work
At the time work was moving at a nice pace. I had a couple of projects that were ahead of schedule without pressing deadlines. A week without work later and with deadlines moved up I wasn’t all that far ahead of schedule as I had been.
As luck would have it many of my clients started calling around the same time with new requests. Not that I’m complaining. I’m happy when clients have more work for me. Still it contributed to a lack of time for blogging.
Since then new clients have arrived and existing clients have sent even more work. It seems like every day someone else is calling. Good stuff for me, not so good for keeping up with this blog.
Personal Demands On My Time
One last thing has added to the time crunch. I have something going on in my personal life that’s demanding a lot of my time. I’ll hold off on mentioning what it is at the moment, but it’s all good. Just something that requires a lot more of my time than I realized. I’ll fill you in on the details in a few weeks.
None of the above is meant to offer a excuses and I know being busy sounds a bit lame for why I haven’t been writing much. I mostly wanted to let everyone know I was still here and fill you in a little on what’s been going on.
Along with a lack of blogging, I haven’t been as active at most of the social media sites where I participate and have even been lagging some in replying to email. Thought I’d let people know I haven’t entirely fallen off the face of the earth.
So once again I’ll ask if anyone would like to write a guest post or two. While I do hope to find more time for writing in the weeks ahead I suspect my posting will still be on the light side for another month at which point we enter the holiday season. If you’re interested in writing here send me an email. Thanks.
Download a free sample from my book, Design Fundamentals.
You know I’m alwyas up for a guest post Steven. I’ll hit you via email.
Thanks James. I had a feeling you’d take me up on the offer.
I would join in on the guest posting. But I having a writers block.
Maybe writing for me will help break the block. No worries though, if you don’t write something now. I’m sure I’ll be offering the opportunity to guest post again.
I actually think I have a winning idea. I just need to run it by you before I start getting the material together.
Thanks Bryan. I do like the idea you emailed me.
If I can think of something relevant I’ll send it off your way.
Thanks Adam. I was hoping you might be interested.
Hey Steven, I might also do one of the guest posts here. Looking for good places to post. 🙂
Thanks Manish. I tried to email you yesterday to give you the go ahead and my email was returned. The response from the mail server said my email address was was blocked.
If you want to send me an email to info[at]vanseodesign.com I’ll reply and see if that goes through.
Steven,
Late to the party here, but I’m glad to hear my post on the Mac move was helpful to someone. Not sure how I missed this – your feed is in my newsreader.
Thanks Dan. No worries about not seeing the post sooner. I know how easy it is to miss a post here or there.
Thanks too for your post about the Mac move. I was pretty sure I was going to make the move, but your post convinced me it was the right thing to do and that getting things set up the way I wanted would be easy.
A few months later and I’m a happy Mac user and planning to stay that way.