Monday, July 21, 2008

What A Time To Make Big Changes!

My first step at communicating about my new career was starting this blog as Chasing Wisdom. I did that before I was even clear what my new career would be. I narrowed my focus to personal development coaching and renamed this blog Twisting Road. I started a Blog-Zine at Chasing Wisdom where I wrote about creative career choices, self-employment, getting along with money, mentorship as leadership, and time management.

A few months back I started an e-mail newsletter, On The Twisting Road, to focus on creative careers, self-employment, and entrepreneurship. That led to some important questions, like What’s the difference between Chasing Wisdom and my e-mail newsletter? and Do I still need both of them? I finally sorted out my ideas and make some big decisions. But why in the world did I choose now to put them in place?

This is a short week for me since I will leave on a road trip (yes, another one for soccer) with my sons. I will be gone for several days – and I will be hoping that the road there and back is only twisting in symbolic ways! That means I will have a delay in implementing the changes I planned, but I wanted to go ahead and get started.

I set up a site for creative career and entrepreneurship articles and resources at TwistingRoad.com. I set up a sub-domain to host this blog, which started on Blogger. I will be slowly moving all the old posts there so it contains the complete archive.

I set up a separate sub-domain at TwistingRoad.com for my Anything But Marketing! blog, which I started on TypePad to learn that format. I love it, by the way, but enjoy the freedom of having my site hosted and installing the blogging software. TypePad doesn’t allow me to do that.

The biggest change I have planned is for Chasing Wisdom. During coaching class exercises, I realized my early vision for Chasing Wisdom got clouded as I started adding topics about creative career transition. My broader vision is to use it to write about creativity and authentic living. I want it to be less about “how-to” and more about “why-to.” I hope to be able to include excerpts of creative writing and more stories about artistry. It will be more about psychological and spiritual development and may even dance with philosophy from time to time.

I’m going to decide which sections of Chasing Wisdom to share with the Twisting Road e-zine and start moving them over. I will leave previous issues of Chasing Wisdom in place, but the style and theme will shift going forward. Chasing Wisdom will sit patiently a while longer while I focus on getting Twisting Road set up. I’ll announce its return when a new issue is ready.

Next week I’ll be in North Carolina and I’ll have my old laptop with me. If I have the time and can get to a free or relatively inexpensive internet connection I will post here and send out my On The Twisting Road e-mail newsletter. If I don’t get the chance, I will at least sketch my article and finish it when I get back. Having this record helps me when I need to look back and see what I was thinking before. Hopefully it helps some of you see one man’s journey to a creative career and self-employment, including all the detours and false starts as well as the forward motion.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

No comments: