Rapidly Expanding Responsibilities, and Back to Blogging

To my neglected readers (all 11 of you),

Once again, my professional life has stomped all over my burgeoning writing career.  I know, it is extremely selfish of me to leave you all for so long, but the last fiscal quarter has seen a significant uptick in the rate of inquiries at my little sustainability consulting practice, which has resulted in a couple of new clients.  At the same time, my Professorial responsibilities at Lane Community College have expanded somewhat.  The result is that all of my efforts at writing about sustainability have been sidelined by work that actually pays.

But on top of all that paying work, my financially un-recognized responsibilities have also expanded of late.  In February of this past year, I was officially elected the new chair of the Eugene Branch of the Cascadia Green Building Council.  I have been working with the branch for just over a year now, and served as the chair of the Programming Sub-Committee until the recent elections.  I am taking over from Kristen Taylor, who was the chair for 2 years before me, at a very exciting time.  Kristen over-saw a very constructive process of arriving at a 5 year vision for the branch in a series of sessions just before the election, and both the Branch at large and the Programming Committee that I used to chair have just completed a set of ambitious goals for 2012.  I am very proud to have been selected for this position, and I hope that my energy and passion will translate to good leadership for the Branch as we take the first steps towards our new vision.

With all of these new responsibilities, my writing has completely withered on the vine (much like my garden last spring), but I am finally finding my keel even once again.  As my roles and responsibilities in life are expanding at a rapid rate, I have found the David Allen approach to Getting Things Done (I won't discuss GTD here, but rest assured it is awesome - if you want to know more, consult the internet, it has much to say), and things are finally getting so manageable that I feel confident in actually returning to the blog!  I am in the process right now of re-imagining this little writing sandbox I have been kicking around in for the past few years, and turning it into something a little bit more structured.  We'll see if any good ideas come out of it, or if any of them actually work, in time.  But for now, keep your eyes peeled (all 22 of them) for more to come.

Thank you very much to the handful of regular readers who have supported me as I stumble towards a functional blog,

Yours,

-Gabe