woolcovered

It's not without a sense of irony that I write that I do intend to blog more frequently. The ironic part being that I'm not honestly certain how much spare time I'm even going to have these days.

The double-duty between the part-time and full-time gigs has been particularly challenging this week. The past few days were long ones, as I was going in early to compensate for up for the fact that I'm currently taking the afternoon off. (This entry is actually coming at you from the Toronto-Guelph 2:00 p.m. Greyhound bus.) An orthodontist appointment has me going back to the hometown, so I've worked out a flex-time arrangement with the powers-that-be. I'm going to try and wait for a week where I don't have these sorts of obligations before I conclude whether or not I can keep both (though I imagine it shouldn't be a problem).

In terms of updating more frequently, I'm uncertain if I want to take a new direction with my blog. The new job certainly would give me no shortage of things to talk about, especially given that I spend a good part of my day media monitoring/reading the news. To touch onto that, the nature of my Ministry's focus area certainly makes for some interesting material. I've found the stories we have to focus on generally pull the heartstrings pretty strongly in both directions - there's the bad news (shelter closing, death of a child under ward care, cutbacks, general complaints of shortcomings) and then the really good stuff (new centres opening, youth/community groups giving back in a new way, new charities, human-interest success stories). The effect of all of these stories is amplified by the sense that they generally involve the most vulnerable folks in society; the impoverished, the disabled, or the children. I just hope that reading this stuff every day doesn't make me too thick-skinned...perhaps blogging could be the answer to that?

I do know that I intend to keep both of my PR society memberships into the next year. I still feel the need to keep current on this whole communications industry. However, I still have no intentions of making this a PR blog. There's just too damn many of them out there, and as a new communicator, I hardly hold an expert opinion on the matter.

Music/pop culture definitely still interests me, though I'm uncertain how much I really want to talk about it. I've become a bit passive in this area of late, largely 'cause of the breadth of services available these days to turn people onto new tunes. Really, the need for dialog seems to be disappearing. I mean, after I listen to something now, I normally just rate it on amazon and use their marketing machine to pump out some new recommendations. It's a decent give/take - they build an aggregate of my consumer patterns, I get more recommendations of new consumables. I used to think this was pretty evil, but at least this way I get something out of the deal.

Anyway, what I can promise is my next entry will be of greater substance (and hopefully focus). Consider me caught up.