When Your Blog Goes On Sabbatical! (6 Reasons to do it)

I have been a little quiet of late.  

To clarify (before those of you who know me personally start piping up to argue the ‘quiet’ bit) I mean quiet on the blog writing front.  I am not going to jump into a whole pile of excuses and blame it on being busy, because I am ALWAYS busy, but I did take my blog and place it on a type of digital ‘time out’.  Not the naughty step type of time out, but the sabbatical type of time out.  

For sometime I have been wondering about my blog, and if I was going to carry on in the direction my blog has taken (which seems to be somewhat preoccupied with all things leadership and education), start a new one or try juggle two.  In someways it is a bit like being at a cross roads (some kind of blogette mid life crisis – I know blogette is not a real word but, oh well).  

You see, when I started my blog, it was to release my creative genie, which had been locked away for far too long.  Initially, I thought I would blog more around the lifestyle genre – you know, topics like ‘My 13 year old is driving me nuts’, or ‘Is our world run by mad men?” with the odd post about some of my favourite things such as ‘Why Mink boots are the best thing in your closet’ or ‘Why this lipstick will change your life’.  Initially I figured Four Seasons In One Kiwi would drift off into my professional life (it is a large all consuming part of my day so it makes sense) at times, but I had not realised it would morph into mostly being about my professional life.  

Hence the cross roads.  

As a result of said cross roads, I have temporary placed my blog into a time out type of sabbatical.  It is not like I have not been writing – on the contrary,  I have more half written and unpublished posts to rival any mainstream media outlet, and I have been dabbing in a variety of other creative outlets (such as Bullet Journalling, website fiddling with Wix, slideshow creations with My SimpleShow, digital badge creation with Credly and when we went away to New York at Easter, notating the trip by using Trip Cast).   I have to confess to binge watching a few things on Netflix as well, but this is about recharging by being a blobby  McBlobster than being creative! 

I decided during the recent term break to make a decision – keep it or replace it.  I want my blog to be successful and my writing to be useful, and that is why I placed it into time out. Contradictory I know.   

I needed to make some decisions.  Would I decide to stay with Blogger or transfer to WordPress, or start fresh, or run two.  It is having to make these decision which have in some ways  held me back, and been a bit of a heavy weight on my mind, which in turn, led to a bit of procrastination.   But then I had an epiphany. 

One night as I was writing another blog post on leadership in my head instead of trying to sleep, I realised that I need to keep this blog because it serves a couple of very good purposes.  It keeps my brain for keeping me awake because I have written my words here, and it helps me reflect on what is happening in my professional world.  I still want to write the lifestyle things (just for fun) so I am still a little stuck in the traffic isle of my cross roads, but at least I have made the step back into continuing Four Seasons in One Kiwi.  At some point I will decide if there is room on here to write about professional things and the other areas that interest me or start a different blog, but for now, time to get back onto the writing wagon.  

In case you are interested, there has been some upsides to placing my blog into time out, if you are feeling a little betwixt and between yourself.

6 Reasons to Place Your Blog into Time Out:   

1. Placing my blog into  time out has allowed me to try my hand at something new which has given me a new perspective about creativity and this is energising.  I have done some great things with my new iPad Pro and apple pencil (a blog post for another day!).  I am not short on inspiration.

2.  Placing my blog into time out has allowed me to decide if blogging is important enough to carry on with.  Bonus for me is that I realised that writing makes me happy, shuts my thinking up and helps me reflect on the world around me. 

3. Placing my blog into time out has allowed me to tap into a new side of creativity and this in turn, means I have explored other ways to increase productivity and write in other genres, including fiction.  

4. Placing my blog into time out has allowed me to catch up on some reading – the irony here is that that in turn has inspired me to write!  Oh the wonderings I have had!  

5. Placing my blog into time out allowed me to enjoy our holiday in New York without being tied into having to blog.  A caveat here however, is that I wrote in a journal (which allowed me to connect in a real hands on, physical way) and I recorded our daily adventures via Trip Cast.  This was harder than I thought, because I found New York to be a bloggers paradise….I could start a whole new blog just writing about the crazy beauty that is NY! 

6. Placing my blog into time out gave me a chance to do a digital detox of a sort.  In addition to taking a break, I have also tried to not open my laptop as much in weekends, or reply to emails on a Sunday.   It has not been easy, but not opening my laptop to blog is actually what is needed to take time out from the digital world of always being available.  This ‘detox’ has been good for me.