No, I’m not talking about the baseball cap and empty beer pitcher look you see to your right.  Those are actually part of my “new look.”

I’m talking about a blogging style makeover.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

When I started my first blog in 2003, my style was very polished and sunshiny … pretty annoying and sugary sweet. Even I hated myself. ;-)  In 2004, when Z and I started JobsBlog, I took this sort of, “Hey, here I am, and I’m going to tell you like it is” approach.  That style worked well for me until it started being misinterpreted as arrogance, which wasn’t my intent at all.  Then my style morphed into the most bland of bland personas … it even bored me.  Honestly, I just became too gun-shy, and I was afraid to be “me” anymore.  Luckily, I had loyal readers so they stuck with me. 

Now that I’m with JobSyntax, it’s time to break-out the real Gretchen again.  I'm free!  I thought about going back to that “I’m going to tell you like it is" approach, but when I read my old JobsBlog posts from that era, I really don’t like the person I see.  I can understand why people thought I was being arrogant.

So I’ve decided just to play with this a while and see what style emerges.  The point of the JobSyntax blog is for Zoë and me to impart recruiting and jobhunting wisdom to the geek world … but it’s also about your getting to know us, and right now, I just don’t think that’s happening.

For now, my plan is to be much more personal and laid back.  I’ll infuse professional advice and nuggets into my posts, but I may tell you how I’m feeling, too.  I think that’s ok.  I read blogs for the writer and “voice.”  If an interesting person has interesting things to say (on any topic), I’m there; if an uninteresting person has interesting things to say, I’m probably not even reading. 

Maybe one day I’ll reclaim my old status again.  I may have left JobsBlog, but I'm not a has-been!  :) 

gretchen

today's emotion:  content