You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting to the blog as often lately. There is a good reason for this, and I want to share it with you, since you all have been such wonderfully loyal and engaged readers.
I launched the Social Velocity blog in September of 2008, nine years ago this month. I started writing these blog posts (largely to myself and a few friends and family) as a catharsis. I was often frustrated by dysfunctions I saw in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, and I felt a burning desire to call a spade a spade. Over time, to my immense surprise and delight, my audience grew. A few years in, I began to create some regular series — Financing Not Fundraising, 10 Great Social Innovation Reads, the SV Interview Series — and am lucky enough to host several amazing guest bloggers. And thus the blog became a very regular part of my life.
But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we are, in our modern lives, so completely driven by the to do list that we rarely (if ever) take a big step back and ask what it’s all about. I have found myself in recent months needing to distance myself from the endless to do list and carve out some space for bigger, deeper thinking, writing, exploring. I have begun feeling a real need to find more quiet so that I can listen more intently to what I’m supposed to be doing.
At the same time, the 2016 election and the subsequent relentless blow after punishing blow against the progressive causes I have spent my life championing has really thrown me for a loop, as I know it has many of you. I’m feeling a desire to figure out a bigger role for myself in the social change arena, to figure out how I can, as Darren Walker put it, “take up the mantle and choose to lead.” Because I truly believe that now, more than ever, we are all called to play a bigger role in the social change we seek.
But figuring that out takes time for thinking, analyzing, scheming. And it’s hard for me to carve out that space when I’ve got a blog publishing schedule breathing down my neck.
The constant drum of the blog deadline (I try to publish most Tuesdays and Thursdays) has become a bit of a burden. Rather than always writing because my heart required it, I began writing because the calendar required it. Instead of being a joy, the blog began to feel stale and punishing to me. Add to that the many other things I have been working on (my consulting practice, book ideas, other projects), and I have begun to realize that I need space to think bigger about what my voice in the social sector should be. I am, it seems, finally taking my own advice to “find the value in quiet.”
And don’t think that I have made this decision lightly. It terrifies me to walk away, even briefly, from something I love doing and a readership I am so fond of. But sometimes you have to do the thing that scares you most.
While I so appreciate you, my loyal readers, and your emails, comments, Tweets and support, I need to take a bit of a step back and find some space to figure out what is next for the blog. Rest assured, I have no visions of ending the blog. I know that if I give up my outlet for the things I need to say, I will probably explode. But I do need some space to reinvent the blog.
So I may not write as often for awhile. Or I may write soon on new and different topics. I don’t have a timeline for when I’ll write again. I just know that I will. It might be tomorrow, it might be next week, it might be in 3 months.
I hope that when I figure it out, you will join me again. So stay tuned!
Photo Credit: Richard Revel
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