Updates & On Foodblogging

This little hiatus I've been on seems to be dragging on for quite some time.

I have had quite a bit of stuff happen since the start of the new year. I started a new job, for one thing, and so far that is going well, though seniors seem like a finicky bunch to cook for!

I also found a place to move to, and I have been distracted lately with the details of that. I'll be moving between March 15 and April 1 (the place will be vacated by March 15 but it needs some paint & a few odds and ends done to it), and you can read more about my new home here. I haven't lived on my own for about 13 years, and I'm feeling quite daunted by it. The responsibility of it sometimes threatens to overwhelm me. This is a huge step for me, and I know it will be a positive thing, but it's stressful and frightening.

I also have been asked to be a columnist for our local online paper, The Rossland Telegraph. This came about indirectly through blogging, but more directly via my one-woman Owe-lympic protest when the torch relay came through town on January 24. You can see that post here. The protest went great and I was not arrested, and the editor of the Telegraph saw me out there with my sign (I was hard to miss). When he did his story on the torch relay, I sent him the link to my blog post, and after he read a bit of my "every day" blog, he asked if I'd like to write columns for the Telegraph. He invited me to a meeting with the two other guys who run the site and it was a great group of forward-thinking, open-minded people. So, now I have a a monthly column, the first of which was published today, and you can read it here. Well, I am now a columnist twice over, since I am still writing for Bread 'n Molasses (the new article will be coming out in the March 1 issue, and I'll post it when I get my copies of the magazine).

I have been struggling with food blogging lately for a few reasons.

For one thing, I'm trying to lose a bunch of weight, so I have pretty much stopped baking and I am eating what seems to me to be fairly unblogworthy meals. Nothing exciting, nothing overly photogenic. So far, so good: I am down 17lbs and have 24 to go.

I also have been distracted with other life stuff, as detailed above.

Mainly though, time is a factor. It's not the writing of the blog that is the big time consumer, it's the reading & commenting on everyone else's blogs. I subscribe to dozens of food blogs and I love them all! I really do! But I simply have not got the time to read and comment on so many food blogs anymore. And let's face it, there is a lot of give & take in the food blogging community. No one will read this site if I don't read other sites; my traffic proves that.

Food blogging has been a huge lifeline for me these past 3 - 4 years as I've been through a huge episode of MDD and been in recovery for that episode in that time. This blog gave me purpose, structure, goals, interaction, it's produced friendships and connections, and it's been fun, educational, and a great adventure. But I'm not sure I need it in the same way I did while I was so sick. Life is starting to open up for me (knock on wood it stays that way) and I don't have the same need for what food blogging has provided me with in the past.

I am not shutting down the site and I'm not quitting food blogging, but I do need to find a way for it to work in my current life, and I really don't know yet how that will look. It might be in limbo for a while longer as I sort it all out for myself. My traffic is going to suck, which means my advertising revenue is going to suck, but there isn't a lot I can do about that. I have to find a way for this to work for me again, and I don't know how long that will take.

Thanks to everyone for reading & sticking with me. You can always keep up with my general life stuff over at Wandering Coyote. Take care & I will see you when I see you!