A Look back at 2014 and a look forward to 2015
It occurs to me that some of you may have stumbled across this blog recently, or rediscovered that it’s started up again out of the blue so I thought I’d give you all an explanation of what’s been going on the past 6 years.
In 2008 I had a small accident that cause me a few health problems. By the Easter of 2009 my health forced me to quit my full-time job and as a result I felt somewhat of a fraud writing about workplace productivity and motivation when I wasn’t “properly” working so I just let this blog die a slow death.
By early 2010 I was feeling better so I started my own company providing outsourced web development services to a variety of customer types. This would have been a perfect time to blog about my time management skills, coping with idiot customers and keeping track of tasks but to be honest with you, I was far too busy!
As the years have moved on, I’ve cut down on the number of idiot customers I deal with and have started concentrating on work that I want to do, and that I find personally rewarding in some way. I’m fortunate enough to be in a financial situation that allows me to do this, but it was still stuck in the back of my mind that others may not be so lucky (and believe me, I’m not that lucky all of the time, I still have to deal with my fair share of prats!) or were looking for information and advice on how to manage their careers, work/life balance and technology.
How this blog was re-started
2014 has been an interesting year for me, I started up a couple of new blogs, one “professional“, the other one comedy and I also resurrected this blog which had sat gathering dust for quite a while. The reasons behind restarting “Flipping Heck!” are (I think) quite interesting.
In late September I received notification from my web host that my blog had been hacked and they had to take it offline for security reasons. Most people would be rather p***ed off that they had their blog hacked but for me it gave me the impetus to get off my backside and breath life into it again. I had always thought about starting up this blog again but there seemed to be nothing giving that initial burst of motivation to do so.
So, after the hacking, I sat down and looked at all of the available blogging platforms (I was running some really ancient bespoke software at the time), decided that it would be easier to import my existing content into WordPress and set a self-imposed time limit of 7 days to get my blog moved over to the new platform, with a working template and a new post to announce my return.
I made my deadline with two hours to spare… talk about cutting it close!
The was no need for me to set a hard-and-fast time limit to get everything up and running but I knew if I didn’t then this blog would just be added to my ever-mounting “Someday-Maybe” list.
And I’ll tell you what, I’m so glad I’ve started this up again, I wish I’d done it sooner! The feedback that I’ve received from you guys has been phenomenal – and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you reading this for helping me get this blog back up and running on the Internet Superhighway; without you this blog wouldn’t be what it is.
What to expect in 2015
I’m not a big fan of setting down long-term goals in stone, there are too many factors that can creep in and throw a spanner in the works but I thought if I publicly stated what I hope to achieve with this blog in 2015 then I may be held to account – and have the motivation to follow through on my threats, er I mean promises!
More reviews of things that matter to you
Since starting this blog back up, I’ve been contacted by several publishers, app developers and companies asking me to review their products. Don’t worry, this blog won’t become crass an commercialised I promise!
I will only review products and services that fit the niche of this blog and that I personally think will help you in your daily lives (I’ve turned quite a few down already that I felt didn’t fit the bill). I will also review these honestly, I’m not going to write a rave review of something I haven’t tried out properly or I think is rubbish just because I got a freebie.
More posts
I’ve decided to increase from two to three posts a week. Partly this is to allow for the extra reviews that I’ll be posting but also as I’d like to do a weekly web round up of articles that I’ve found interesting on other websites but don’t necessarily deserve an entire post on their own, plus it’ll be a bit of “light” reading for you over the weekend.
Start a newsletter
I used to run a successful newsletter years ago and have decided to re-start this again so that I can provide you with a digest of posts (frequency to be determined!), exclusive content and – if things go the way I plan – special offers from select providers or competitions. If you’re interested in getting in on the action (!) you can sign up here, do so and you’ll get access to my free e-book “Managing Meetings” In which I take a light hearted look at meetings but also offer some serious advice on how to run them.
Interact more with you guys and create a sense of community
Comments are quite low on this blog at the moment. I’m hoping that by using the newsletter, we can foster a sense of community and can start to interact more with each other, providing advice and support where needed.
Whether this is in the comments on posts, or I start a forum I am unsure about how to do this. Keep an eye out for a post and poll to find out what you want from Flipping Heck in 2015.
Finally, Happy New Year To You All
I’d like to once again say thank you to all of the readers of this blog for making it what it is, and allowing me to do something that I really enjoy.
I hope your 2015 is a brilliant, happy and productive year and you achieve whatever goals you set yourselves.
And remember, if it all goes a bit wrong. Don’t swear. Take a step back and say “Flipping Heck!“.
Happy 2015
Katy
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