I admit, sometimes it takes me a while to get it together. Developing new routines seems to be a big challenge for me. Sticking to those routines in the beginning so that they become habits is an even bigger challenge for me. I’m not going to lie, there are plenty of new routines that never find their way to the habit zone. I stumble all the time, in that regard. I’ve been going through developing some new routines lately that I desperately need to stick. But first, I guess I should rewind a bit…

In late March, I learned that I’d landed a contributing writer position with About. com that I’d applied for back around Christmas and spent all of February interviewing for (yes, a month long interview). Unfortunately, this good news came at the same time that we were dealing with some bad news in the family. My father-in-law’s health was failing and he passed away right about the time that the About folks wanted me to get started. Needless to say, I had to postpone starting with About.com until May while I pulled back from pretty much all of my work beyond stuff I’d committed myself to previously. I would have much preferred some calm time to plan the integration of this new work with my existing work, but it didn’t shake down like that–so May was a bit of a mess as I tried to not only acclimate to a new work system but to keep up with the one I already had and make them gel.

I’ll sheepishly admit that I was a bit stunned when I managed to hit all of my hard deadlines and had a few days left at the end of the month to regroup and get organized before the beginning of this month. It also afforded me the opportunity to do a little thinking and set some new goals. (That’s my favorite time!) So I’m back, with a plan (that means many, many lists and a well-blocked calendar) and I’m ready to rock. I took a little time to re-style the blog to better fit some of the new goals I have out ahead of me and finally populated the poor, far-too-long-neglected Tutorials page with some of the content I published at About.com last month.

Getting it together sure feels good! :)