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Keep up with my blog!

Bear with me, this one is a little intense...

I started this blog just after the new year and I am quite proud that I am just shy of fifty posts. Sure, I have lofty dreams of posting multiple times a day, but for now, my professional and personal lives just don't allow for that. I do have a short (and very do-able) list of ways in which I hope to make this blog a more interesting and useful experience for my dear readers.

Platform 

I wasn't quite sure how well I would keep up with this blog, so I sought out the easiest blog platform I could find. Posterous has been great. I love the ease of just emailing my posts to the site and having them delivered and ready for minor editing. Posterous is a great platform for anyone that is starting out with a blog or wants to keep a mostly private site out in the blogosphere. I really can't say anything but great things about this service and I probably will create a completely personal blog with Posterous one day in the future.

Unfortunately, I think the time has come to upgrade to a more advanced blogging platform that will offer me more options. I'm a huge Google fan and I love the Google network, but I have had some obnoxious layout problems with Blogger in my other blog, which in turn, deterred me from using Blogger with Judge Me. I have faith that Google will stay in the forefront of innovation and I'm already quite intrigued by their new upgrades in customization. I'm still up in the air on whether I want to give Blogger another shot or not.

Wordpress is another one I have considered, but I haven't quite played around enough with this one to decide.

Makeover

Once I get the platform sorted out, I'm going to put some serious thought into the image of my blog.

To start, the name has got to go. I came up with Judge Me on a total whim. I wanted to start a blog immediately, but didn't put much thought into what to call it. I don't hate the name, but if you know me on a personal level, you'll know that it's so not me. It's sassy and outspoken and I am neither of the two. I have some ideas that I'm throwing around, but I haven't quite settled on a new name just yet.

With the new name, I'd like to develop a color scheme and own it. My current theme is just too dark, but I've loved using these colorboards from 100 Layer Cake as inspiration. I adore cool and neutral colors, so you can probably expect to see that palette in my new design.

I'm also hoping to familiarize myself a little bit more with coding. I could get lost for hours playing around with the inner workings of a website, but I just don't have the time to learn those things right now. I will have to set up some "study" times or maybe consider taking courses in web design.

Content

Throughout my day I always seem to have the thought "Oh! This would make a good blog post!" and I keep notes on each of these ideas. I think I'm doing well in that sense, but I'd like this blog to have a little bit more direction. Simple Lovely, Design*Sponge, Oh Joy, Cup of Jo and Swiss Miss are five of my favorites and I certainly look to them for inspiration. I want this blog to be related to my personal hobbies and not my work. I also want to cut out some of the personal stuff. I can justify this for now because I'd like my readers to get a better sense of the type of person I am. But again, I'd like to have a separate Posterous account for the personal stuff.

Network

Finally, I hope that once this blog gets more fully developed I can start to connect with and grow my readership. A blog is a commitment. I never expected to get comments and links within the first few months of posting. I do this blog because I have fun with it and it's an escape from work and my personal life. I would be absolutely thrilled to learn that someone else gets a kick out of the things I post, but for now, I do this for me. I hope that my blog develops into an exciting resource for my readers and that people will start checking it weekly like I do for so many of my blog crushes.

Once I get to that point, I want to connect with other bloggers through social media and conventions and share resources. I also want to get in the habit of participating in other blogs and not just being an observer. I think I hesitate to post comments on blogs because sites like Design*Sponge can easily accumulate 100+ posts, so what is one more from me? Writing that down makes me realize how backwards that mindset is. Why would anyone connect with me if I don't connect with them?

I'm really enthusiastic about the future of this blog and I hope that I continue to make it worthwhile for my readers. I love that this has become such an integral part of my life and it makes me want to work even harder to produce fresh and exciting material. Thanks to you all for being a part of this adventure!

(photo via kyracee)