The past few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind.
As some of you may know, I’ve been pushing for the last year to get my copywriting business back up and running. By the hand of the good Lord, I’m starting to pick up steam again. As writing projects have poured in, however, my time has shrunk as I balance projects, a little bit of free time, wedding planning, and 40 hours a week working nights in an office. It’s been quite hectic!
Amidst all of this, I’ve been discovering more and more problems with The Nerd. I started this site from day one to build it into something great, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a “Me Too” blogger. My site used a free theme, and formatting problems abounded. I was never quite happy with the design. It came time to make some changes here, as I’ve felt a little lost on here. So here’s my game plan moving forward:
A new tagline (again).
Yeah, I had changed it to “Redefining nerdiness since 2009″, but a very smart fellow told me that you need to know what the tagline means. I boiled down what I felt this site was about by changing it to “Try something new today”. This site isn’t always about being a nerd in the traditional sense. It’s about beating your own path and carving out your own life – how you want it. And to do that, you need to try new things: new activities, new attitudes, new approaches to life.
A new, *premium* design.
For the first time ever, I’ve purchased a WordPress theme. This is the “Headway” theme, which allows me to change the design as I see fit without using a bit of code. I’m still ironing out the kinks, so you’ll see the site change and evolve as the next week or so moves on. But now, I can have the clean, sharp design that I’ve wanted without sacrificing formatting or anything else!
More Twitter involvement.
If you’re not following me on Twitter, get going. I share tons of links almost every day from my Google Reader, and I try to add value wherever I can. Plus, you’ll see tweets in the sidebar of this site, too, as always.
My picture (hey, that’s me up there!).
You can see that the header image at the top of the page includes what is a 6-year old picture of me. It’s the best I can do right now until I have head shots taken or something down the line. It’s just a simple reminder that this site is written by a human being. I’m not afraid to put myself out there.
Better content.
I’m going to push myself to do the very best writing I can do again. I want to tell stories, I want to help people. I want to include screenshots. I want to get back into podcasting. I want The Practical Nerd to be the quality resource that I envisioned it to be from the beginning. That means more work on my end, but hopefully, a better experience for all of you.
More surprises.
I don’t know how/when/where I’m going to pull the trigger on some of this stuff, but I have some ideas up my sleeve. Stay tuned!
If you have any feedback, let me know by firing me an email or leaving a comment on this post. I’m always happy to hear from any of you, and thanks for sticking around while I feel some of this stuff out!