Why I Took A Year Off From Blogging

Can you believe it has been a 

(school) year since we've last said hello?  

To be honest, I have no idea where the time went.  My blog absence didn't begin as an intentional decision.  I was overwhelmed by work, family, and other responsibilities that made blogging something I just didn't have time for.  I kept meaning to do it, but as my daily to do lists got longer and longer, blogging kept getting moved down the list. When I look back at the last few posts I did write, you can sort of see it was coming.

At one point, I realized I hadn't blogged in a couple of months.  That was when I did make a conscious decision to take the school year off.  It was not an easy decision.  I like blogging.  I really, really like blogging!  I like sharing ideas, having a place to express myself, and the interaction with you all through comments. I share, but I also learn so much from you.  However, when blogging became something I no longer looked forward to, I knew it was time to take a break.

It had been, for me, a difficult couple of years at work with some changes that had me feeling somewhat uninspired.  I found myself with fewer and fewer ideas on what I wanted to blog about.  If I wasn't energized and excited about what I was doing, how could I possibly come here and share?  I knew that I needed to refocus and find a new way to look at things.  It was all about "reframing" the situation.  Happily, I can write that I am in a totally different mindset now. I want to write a post about reframing and recharging your teaching.  I think we all hit that slump at one time or another, and I was able to find some strategies that really helped turn things around.

So, do I regret taking the year off from blogging?  I can 100% say it was the best thing I could have done!  It really gave me a chance to recharge.  So, what did I do with all that time?  Lots!

I found time for all those school related things I would usually struggle to fit in. . .

I went to several out of district workshops that made my literacy loving heart sing!  I was able to listen and learn from Donalyn Miller, Harvey "Smokey" Daniels, Debbie Miller, Douglas Fisher, Kyleene Beers, and Bob Probst. Tell me that isn't an amazing year of PD! Being able to learn from these literacy leaders has recharged my teaching and definitely made me refine my methods.  It has also given me so many ideas for blog  posts.  There is so much I want to share with you from these workshops!

I finally got to read some of the books in the giant pile I've been meaning to get to.  Reading in the Wild by Donalyn Miller was a really good one, but I've been on a big Jennifer Serravallo kick.  I love her books. If you are a literacy teacher, she is a must read.  In particular, her latest book, The Reading Strategies Book, is one that should be on every reading teacher's desk. I'm planning to post reviews of the books I've read this past year.  Most were fantastic like the two below, but there were a couple of duds.

 

I worked on cleaning up and reorganizing my classroom.  This included taking the time to purge all those files I haven't opened in forever and reorganizing my closets and drawers that seemed to be filled with things I've sort of just thrown in there. I took a true tough love approach and got rid of anything I knew I haven't used and probably wouldn't.  One of the biggest projects I took on was reevaluating my classroom library.  I have a HUGE class library. After attending the Donalyn Miller workshop, I was inspired to make some big changes. I have a couple of blog posts planned about this with all the details and rational, but I can tell you I ended up purging 271 books and then completely reorganizing it all.  The pic below is from my Instagram that I posted as we were in progress. By the way, Instagram is without a doubt my favorite social media! I must be a visual learner :-)

There was also time to have a life outside of school. I found time to join a gym and workout.  I had time to spend with friends and family.  I read many (GASP!!) non-teaching related books. I went to movies, I slept, I cooked, I went to concerts, fairs, and festivals. I watched TV,  I had a life!  And, it wasn't that blogging took that much time.  I mean, it does take time.  If you blog, you know it can be time consuming.  But not blogging gave me nights  and weekends free to do more without the guilt of thinking I should be blogging.

The one area I had hoped to work on this past year was my presence on Teachers Pay Teachers. Yeah, that didn't happen.  I still have just one or two lonely, simple freebies hanging out on my TpT page.  I had lots of ideas and projects in mind, but never got around to it.  It is still a goal for me.  Being able to share products and ideas that work for me and I hope will help others is something I still really want to do.  I just have to realize this is going to be a slow moving goal.  I still have a lot to learn about creating products and how TpT works.  I have July and August to do some learning and creating, so I'm hoping to have at least a couple of things ready to go for September. But, I'm not
going to be pressuring myself to do it all.  It will happen as it happens.

One thing this year off did help me realize is just how much I missed blogging. Even though I'm glad I took the year off, I'm excited to get back to it.  Also, I have to give a huge thanks to those of you that continued to pop in during the year despite not seeing new content. To be honest, I was shocked anyone was still checking in on my little blog!

Moving forward, I have a better balance now with work, life, and blogging. I don't have a blogging schedule planned.  I just have things I want to share on occasion.  It might be twice a week, it might be once a week.  I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that I am  happy to be back to blogging! 

The New Blog Design is Up and Running!

It's here! 

The new blog design is up, and I love it! 

Thanks again to Megan at A Bird in Hand Designs who was so nice to work with.  It is still a bit of a work in progress on my end, but the overall design is just what I wanted.  I love the colors, fonts, and overall look.

Let me take you on a little tour! 

I'm starting with two fun things I really love and am so happy I included:

• A Pinterest hover button.  If you want to pin a picture from the blog, just hover a second and to the side of the picture a little apple will pop up to click on for an automatic pin.
• "Return to Top" button floating on the bottom right side of the page.  I love this button on any web page I go to.  How many times have you scrolled down a ways and then have to scroll your way all the way back to the top?  I so wish Google had this button on their search page.

The Header:

• I do love the header Megan came up with.  She was so patient with me as we went through a few different designs for it with colors, backgrounds, fonts, and images.  One thing I really like are the tabs at the top.  That's one of the areas that is still a work in progress on my end.  The "Home" tab is the regular blog page. 
• On the "About Me" tab will bring you to a blank page for now.  I am going to be putting up a mini bio to introduce myself and a picture.  The "Hello" on the sidebar will be a welcome-to-the-blog type of thing directing you to the Hello tab if you want to know more.
• There is also a "Freebies" tab.  I wasn't sure what to do with the third tab.  I needed one to just balance the look of the top a bit.  I decided that it would be "Freebies" and I will list on that page links to all the different freebies/printables I post on the regular blog.  It will be a sort of quick reference.  If my blog were a box of Cracker Jacks, that page would be the prize at the bottom of the box!

On the sidebar, there were a few things I wanted:

• Buttons! Buttons! Buttons!   There are a few social media buttons:  There you will find a button to follow me on Bloglovin', and buttons that link to my Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook pages. All of which I am really just getting started with.  Megan also designed covers for me so that the look of those pages matches my blog.  One social media site I use and like is Instagram, and I totally forgot to have that put on.  I will probably go back and see if Megan can do it at a later date, but for now I think I have enough on my social media plate.  There is also a button that links to my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  As I wrote in this post, it is also a new endeavor for me which I probably won't be doing much with until summer.  However, if I do put something new up, I will post about it as an FYI. I also have a button for email, and now that I have linked it to my iPhone, I'm finding it so much easier to keep up with emails from readers.

More sidebar features include. . .

• A button picture for the blog with a "Grab My Button" code. 
• "Follow My Blog" which I'm not sure I need as I have a link to Bloglobin' for following the blog, so I have to look into this.
• "Hello"  This is a little welcome intro that will (when I get a chance to do it) direct you to the "About Me" page.
• "Followers"  That's links and pics to you! Thanks for following!
• "Popular Posts" that shows the 5 most popular posts from the blog.  Right now it is all time favs, but I think I might change it to most popular within the last month. We'll see.
• "Let's Explore!" which has all my crazy post tags that I am still working on cleaning up.
• "Blog Archive" for searching by date.
• "Search This Blog" Just in case those crazy tags and the archive aren't working for ya!
• "TBA" a Teaching Blog Addict award
• "Stat Counter"

I do need to reorder the sidebar items a bit.  Not really totally happy with the order I have them in right now.

Other Extras:

• The blog now has post dividers that will separate each post with a line of apples.
• I also now have a signature with my name and an apple that will appear at the end of every post.

I think that is pretty much everything.  I had no idea how much there was to take into consideration when designing a blog.  You really need to think it out and know what you want on yours.  If you are thinking of doing it, I would suggest looking at blogs you really like the look of.  What do they have in common?  Look at their backgrounds, fonts, and layout.  What do you like and not like?

Think about the layout of your blog.  Where would you want different parts to be?  For example, I had to decide if I wanted the buttons on the sidebar or up in the header.  Not something I even thought about before or even noticed.  Then I looked at other blogs and really noticed them. Everyone does it a little differently! 

Once you have an idea of what you want, I would even sketch out the blog layout to see how I want it to look. Or, you could just work with a great blog designer like I did who is patient with you while you try to figure all this out on the fly! :-)

As I wrote, there are still things to be done to clean up the blog on my end (finish cleaning up the tags, doing the About Me and Freebies pages, reordering the sidebar) but overall I'm just excited to see it up and running.  The procrastinator in my is also excited to see that I actually accomplished something on my 2014 Blog Goal list!  Now, on to the rest of that list. . .