2013 Resolutions…, gathered in one list
Psst- Thanks SO MUCH for the enjoy with our little announcement this morning folks. You rock our socks. For reals.
Well, we are not going to make 2,013 resolutions, but here are five of them. You folks know that every year we like to broadcast them to the world to light a fire under our arse in the hopes of accomplishing them (you can check out last year’s here, 2011’s here, and 2010’s here). So let us get cracking…
#1. Hold On. Let us simply say that for anyone who worries we will run out of things to do or rooms to makeover or projects to tackle… this is going to be our busiest year yet. Chock fulla new Hands-on undertakings. We cannot reveal everything yet (there are some fairly big cats in some fairly big bags) but we cannot wait to free the kitties! So beyond having a ton of untouched spaces to tend to here (like Clara’s big girl room, the front porch, the carport, the guest bathroom, etc) let us simply say we are not going to stop there. We have some other MAJOR things, and we cannot wait to over-share every detail with you folks. And no Mom, I am not pregnant.
#2. Chat Things Up. Without a doubt, you folks put the “you” in Turbodizin, and we have mentioned that we’d like to work more of “you” into our little Hands-on diary. We have in fact heard from a lot of you who’d enjoy to see forums over here as a friendly and helpful way to share photos, advice, ideas, inspiration, and all that good stuff. So we have been researching how to get those going without crashing our site or spending hours each day maintaining them. We’d truly enjoy to give it a try, so our goal is to focus even more on making that happen in the spring (after we are done with book tour craziness). Cross your fingers and whisper “no crashies, no crashies, no crashies” (that is our equivalent to “no whammies”).
#3. Be Realistic. As much as we like to avoid journal stage fright by pretending that we are simply talking to 10 readers, the truth is that there are a lot more people dropping in. And most sites with over 5 million hits a month tend to be coded, written, and run by a team of people. Meanwhile, we are simply a guy and a gal with a toddler running around who are juggling Hands-on projects, post writing, an in-progress book tour, site coding, and a bunch of secret-project balls (wait, that sounds wrong). So this resolution is simply about reminding ourselves that we are only two people. Two highly dedicated folks who enjoy what we do, but two people who cannot do the work of ten people, no matter how hard we try. And this year we are gonna stop beating ourselves up about it.
Since we like our grass roots approach (we have no desire to hire people to answer comments, write posts, or program the site) that means that we need to be as efficient and realistic as possible and stop pressuring ourselves. We are not HGTV or BHG, we are The house team from the block journal. And amazingly, you folks tell us that is a big reason that you like YHL, so it is about time we embraced it.
#4. Reclaim Our Lives. This sort of connects to resolution #3, but we have publicly struggled with finding balance for a few years now (here, here, here, and here) and answered “how do you do it all?” questions with “we simply do not sleep – perhaps we will sleep next year.” Well, it is officially next year, so it would be pleasant not to be up until 1am finishing projects and writing posts and juggling book stuff along with keeping up with normal things like laundry and cleaning and grocery shopping. We never aspired to be people who work on nights, weekends, and even on vacation (in fact we moved from NYC to Virginia back in 2005 to escape that lifestyle) so the irony is not lost on us.
But although many of you chimed in during our blogiversary to say that you’d be glad with one post a day, we are not quite ready to scale things back that much, so we have chose to go from 8 posts a week down to 7 posts a week (along with 2 more over on the house Life as usual of course). At the end of the month whenever we glance back at our monthly roundups we are consistently surprised at how much we have done, and this change should not affect that quite much at all. It mostly means we will space out posts like Window Shoppings, House Crashings, Budget Blooms, or Reader Redesigns a bit more so there is one less of those posts to write, photograph, edit, proofread, and answer questions about each week.
Hopefully you will not notice the shift quite much (we think we will post twice on Monday, once on Tuesday, twice on Wednesday, once on Thursday, and once on Friday along with two more posts each week over on the house Life). And that pace will allow us to spend more time brainstorming ideas, in fact doing projects, and recharging with the family – three things that add up to happier bloggers, which will hopefully lead to even more thought-out projects and creative ideas. It also means we are less likely to throw in the blogging towel. We certainly want to play the long game and not burn out since we truly enjoy this strange little career we have built, especially when we are balanced and smart about how we run this little two person ship of ours.
#5. Be Free. You folks never fail to surprise us by responding to the most random of posts (like this one I wrote about breast feeding and this one John wrote about running). They both got hundreds of comments more than any other Hands-on related post around it, and they remind us that sharing more than simply painting and sawing and gluing and sanding is as lively for you folks as it is for us. Heck, even a random Friday post like this one about five weird things about me elicited over 1,000 comments – and they are without a doubt the funniest comments on our whole site. Seriously, take ten minutes to scroll through a page or two and I guarantee you will be giggling. This journal is our glad place and these spontaneous posts keep it light and lively. And we think blogs that are more stream-of-consciousness than polished-and-ideal are the most lively to read anyway.
So those are our five putting-them-out-there resolutions for the coming year. What are you folks resolving? Any personal ones? Personally I am resolving to simplify things like crazy (something I have said before, but I am feeling even more determined to master it this year). I have too many gadgets and decorative objects and pillows and gift bags and pens and about a million other things that add up to a whole lotta clutter, so I cannot wait to pare down and attempt to live as simply as John and I did back in NYC when we each had compact studios without attics and basements to hoard clutter. Less truly is more, in so many ways.
