WasabiJane Reboot:2010

In a fit of uncharacteristic motivation, I spent Friday evening redesigning my website (see also: the aforementioned afoot changes, only 3.5 months late). I’m nowhere near done, of course, but it’s already better than what I had before.

Ah, what I had before. Ah, the old WasabiJane.

This is, I think, the fourth incarnation of WasabiJane. First there was the waste of a year of a paid domain name from a won bet, then there was blogger. The last incarnation was born in December 2007, when I was still trying to figure out how to systematically break things in WordPress and needed to create a portfolio site. In retrospect, I’m amazed I actually did as much as I did with it; admittedly, I didn’t update the portfolio at all (a function of a poor choice of a template), but up until about a year ago I actually blogged multiple times per month.

I could hazard a guess as to why I stopped. Life has shifted multiple times since I graduated in December 2008. In April, my boss at University Outreach and Engagement told me he couldn’t afford to renew my temp contract, and I’d be out of a job come October. In August, I started transitioning from there to doing contract work at MessageMakers (an awesome production company in Old Town, Lansing). September was consumed by a workation to Northern Wisconsin, a struggle to balance a workload for both MessageMakers and UOE, and a physical move from an apartment into the basement of some friends from church. (September was awful. I don’t recommend trying to balance that much at once without major league support.) For the next six months, life was in…well, I’d call it a holding pattern, but I’ve already seen some good growth as a direct result of it.

In short, the last 18 months or so have been like fertilizer: lots of crap, but necessary for growth.

So where am I now, and why am I actually writing here again? In April, I started a full-time position at Covenant Eyes (official title: Web Content Producer, and yes, I am working on redesigning the site). Of indirect benefit to the blog is the fact that I actually feel stable about life for the first time in a long time. I have a salaried position. I have awesome coworkers. As of two weeks ago, I have my own apartment again. I have negative space again.

The second thing that changed is that I’m back around bloggers. I mean, my desk is right next to the company blogger’s. I proofread at least five blog posts and edit one podcast a week (by the way, this week’s is particularly awesome). And at least a few coworkers have personal blogs. I’m too lazy to look any actual research up at the moment, but there’s sufficient evidence that you rise to (or sink to) the level of your peers. Now that I’m in a place where people blog, I’ll be more likely to think about blogging myself.

Hence the rebirth of WasabiJane. Expect more of what I’ve historically written, only posted more than once every four months. Oh, and probably containing 20% more rants about the porn industry.