Evolution Is Inevitable

Thank you.  I’m so grateful you took the time to reply to my survey, and for your thoughtful and enlightening feedback.  This girlaboutOtown is truly fortunate to have made your acquaintance!

It’s been a few weeks since I posed my questions, and I’ve taken a fair bit of time to absorb your views, divine their meaning and –ultimately – to decide what to do.  As promised, here is what I discovered about you, my dear readers.

• You’re mostly women.  (92.9%!!)
• The majority of you are between 25-35, followed by the 36-45’s.
• A small majority of you are public sector employees, and have been living here in Ottawa quite awhile.
• For the most part, you are still new to girlaboutOtown, and haven’t been reading since the start.
• You’re happy with hearing from me once a week, but would definitely prefer more frequent posts.
• You appreciate my unique perspective, but love the local focus and are really most interested in hearing about events & happenings in advance.

Anyway, here goes.  I began this blog with no end in mind.  I wanted to stretch.  I needed a way to learn, to channel my productive energy, and to express my creativity.  It was a deliberate, determined effort to re-discover the city that has been home to me for most of my life, and to better understand my community.  I was curious too, about the supply of and demand for style.

I never optimized for the search engines, solicited sponsors or sought paid advertisers.  There really was no strategy.  Instead, I was learning a lot, processing what it actually meant to be publishing online, and dedicating a disproportionate amount of my time.  But somewhere along the way, it started to feel like I was performing a service.  And a valuable service indeed.

You are a unique segment of Ottawa’s market, and you are special.  You want fun & funky, stylish & sophisticated, and you want female-focused community-oriented news.  You want your information to be aggregated, filtered, and served up with savvy – and you want to be ‘in the know’.

Clearly, this is why my inbox has been overtaken by very good people trying to reach you, and why my blog now feels more like a conduit than a place for me to create.  I suppose this is also why I constantly find myself scrambling from behind, struggling with the sense I’m serving you poorly, and grappling with guilt for letting you down.

The survey simply confirmed what I already suspected.  You want what I can no longer give.  You deserve better.   And frankly, so do I.

So, yes.  It’s time to stop.  After some serious reflection, I’ve decided to let go of regular posts.  Maybe not forever, since I still own the domain, but at least for now.  No more short notes, long pauses or weak excuses.

My life is evolving, and so too must this blog.  It’s inevitable.

As you know, girlaboutOtown.com isn’t all I’ve got going on.  My business is finally beginning to make sense, and more than anything I’ve ever done before,  being an entrepreneur has engaged my creativity.   I now understand that helping people situate and create a comfortable, nurturing home is my ‘secret hidden talent’ and that sharing it is the best way for me to serve the world.

But, I also want to turn my ‘superpower’ into viable livelihood, so this is where I need to spend my time and energy.  If you are interested in what I’m up to, then  come on over and join me at Housters & Co where I will continue to write, create and connect with genuine passion – in my own quirky, personal way. If not, no hard feelings.

Now, I do understand many of you aren’t likely to follow along.  I also know you won’t find what you’re looking for at girlaboutOtown.com anymore.  Nevertheless,  I’ll be reorganizing the content on the site to make it easier to find the fun stuff, to learn more about living in style here in Canada’s capital, and to read the Courage City profiles of some of our most interesting community contributors & catalysts.  I’ll also be building on my blogroll, because I want to continue keeping up with the amazing new local blogs that seem to be starting almost every week.  And, from time to time, I may even post something of particular interest – but I make no promises.

That said, I don’t do goodbyes.  We have become very good friends you & I, and I’m confident we’ll  stay that way.  We’ll continue to share all we can about courage, commerce and creativity in the city,  and muse about what we’ve seen, heard or learned – but we’ll do it in different ways.  And in the meantime, I’ll still be here, so feel free to stop by and say “Hi!” anytime.