Hello, its me [as if it would be someone else!]

So, I always start my posts with So. I blame @feralibix for that. As we start the new year I start to look at my blog and think it needs a new design. There is nothing wrong with the design but I get bored quite easily or I am always seeking fresh challenges and inspiration. The thing with this blog though, is that I can spend more time mucking around with the design and the twiddly bits than actually writing content so really I should write content and leave the design but there is something nagging at me now every time I see the design. When I was a kid, I got a school friend to design the front of my french book. I showed my dad and he said, “it is more important whats on the inside than on the outside.” As the inside was full of red marks, low marks and corrections he was not wrong there.

Looking at the content, I am happy that I have written some interesting stuff, or I hope it is interesting but all the content has been ‘reasons to do this’ or ’5 tips’ which are just basic link baiting stuff and an attempt to produce interesting and valued content. Whilst I am quite a personable person I don’t share much of my personal life and or feelings, nor am I am about to start ‘opening up’ – I don’t want to or need to and I find this post hard enough as it is. With my Sunday Song posts I wanted to share some of my musical passions in a more ‘permanent’ way that just tweeting about them. although that is a great place to share and explore music. I plan to keep doing them and find things that you may not have heard.

2010 looks to be an interesting year. 2009 was a year of two halfs, and three quarters. The first quarter I was preparing to leave the agency I founded and sold. This was actually a heck of a lot harder than I thought. I had decided to leave because I had achieved my business ambitions but to the detriment of my personal ambitions like learning to play music, get fit and enjoy life a little. So the second half of the year which was the three quarters of post agency life. Going from something that takes up all of your time and thoughts, to not having that was a massive and unexpected wrench. We took off to Oz for three weeks the weekend I left which was amazing and helped the transition but I did still wake up when I returned thinking I had to be somewhere.

What am I going to do? I have enjoyed being a man of leisure, spending time with my beautiful wife and family whilst trying to keep up some form of relevance in ‘the digital sector’ – I am spending more time watching and trading [mainly] tech stocks which I find fascinating as well as keeping up the writing. At the end of 2009 I was asked to contribute to The Next Web which I was delighted with as I had always sought inspiration from their blog. I was also delighted to attend Social Media in Business 09 speak at MediaCamp London 3 and attend LeWeb in Paris. I will also be MC’ing Social Media in Business 10 (May 21) which is going to be awesome.

I am also editing a blog for a close friend of mine, Celandine Rose. The blog www.greenwisdom.co.uk is a natural remedies website aimed at informing others about alternatives methods of keeping healthy. The project is non profit but I enjoy editing a whole new subject. The blog gets updated when I get the time but I plan to devote a little more structured time this year to help it grow.

On top of that I have some more writing opportunities coming up, which I can announce once it is in place. I will also be doing more work to help startup businesses grow with my self defined role as Business Mentor which came off the back of my well received ‘ten tips for starting a business with no investment’ which also went down well on Scribd.

I look forward to playing more with video and Jez is the man who is going to show me how. I know video ‘is massive’ but I have still to get over the ‘shyness’ issue of speaking to the camera and find a way to make ‘talking head’ videos more than just a boring man with large speaking lots.

And I plan to do more travelling. Going to try ski-ing this year so expect lots of stupid questions on Twitter about ski-ing holidays.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your continued support.

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It is funny, I feel very strange about posting this. I debated tweeting this which is why I ended up with the tweet ‘these feelings belong in a zoo’ , the best line in ‘An Imagined Affair‘ by Elbow.