Once upon a time (well, to be exact around July 21st of 2014) I had this grand idea about writing a series of blog posts all based on the same theme of Work Life IMBalance. The idea had grabbed me that if I would just stick to a theme I could knock out posts in nothing flat. I’d be rocking and rolling and helping the world become a better place. You know, the whole “I can change the world for better” ideal that we’ve all had from time to time.

So I started the series, and wouldn’t you know it, but life happened. I got a couple more posts written and more life happened. I was plugging away at my 12-part series, but so many ideas were popping into my brain for blog posts that I couldn’t focus on the series. And I felt guilty writing posts that weren’t in the series, because I’d made a commitment to my readers (you) that I was going to get this series done.

Sometimes I had a great idea for a post and just had to write it…so I warped it into a post in the series, no matter how poor the fit. Sometimes I had a great Work Life IMBalance idea that just disappeared on me before I could get it captured somewhere so I could remember it. On at least three occasions I sat at my computer wracking my brain for that next great post idea that I couldn’t remember…for hours in at least one situation. It was frustrating.

I had created a structure that sounded great on the surface, but I didn’t follow the advice of my 4th Grade teacher, Mrs. Pomplin. I hadn’t written and outline before I started writing. I sort of knew where I wanted to go with the series, but I didn’t have a real roadmap. I didn’t have enough of the structure completed to be able to actually sit down and attack the problem on a regular basis. So I would have to wait for inspiration to hit…but it had to be just the right inspiration. At the right time. In the right place. Having named my blog Hectic-Dad, you already know the rest of the story…inspiration, timing, and location didn’t work out all that often.

Even more salient was the fact that I was getting frustrated between Work Life IMbalance posts. I had so much I wanted to say…but as I’ve already mentioned, I felt guilty writing anything outside the series. I did write a few posts that had nothing to do with the series, and frankly they felt liberating.

So dear reader, I’m going to admit that this series was a huge learning experience for mean. From one viewpoint, it could be called a failure, since I’m not going to finish the full 12 posts (and definitely note going to finish them by the self-imposed 12-week deadline). From another vantage though, it’s been a huge success…for me.

I learned a lot about myself and how I want to communicate my ideas. While deep-down I want to be a very structured person, this blog isn’t the place for that structure. At least not at this time. I’m also evaluating whether this is the place that I really want to preach about productivity in general, or whether I simply want to focus on making your hectic life as a parent more fulfilling and less stressful. Being productive in the business sense is a bit askew to that idea.

I’ll also let you in on a little secret. I discovered that I’m kind of wordy!

Yeah, you already knew that, so you can stop shaking your head. I sort of knew it. I mean, I’ll frequently write something like “…so making a long story short (as if I’ve ever done that before)…” in my emails. I have had a sense that I’m a prolific writer. But I never really thought about it until I started to read my blog in comparison to others. Several folks that I really admire write these amazing posts…and has very, very few words in them.

I realize that I’m still probably going to be verbose. Loquacious. Garrulous. Talkative. Even voluble. I might even be wandering, rambling, or lengthy.

But that doesn’t mean that I have to be boring. I might be, at times, but my goal is to be interesting to you, and maybe even be a bit of a help. To ensure that you’re interested and helped, I need to be engaged and excited about what I’m doing.

So I’m tearing a sheet out of Michael Hyatt’s playbook…sort of.  He recently re-engineered and re-envisioned his very successful podcast and website ThisIsYourLife, despite the fact that it was a roaring success. One of the reasons that he did it was that he had gotten dissastisfied with the actual production of the podcast. I would paraphrase his reasoning as it had become work rather than fun for him. I don’t know if he’d agree with the paraphrasing, but that’s sure how I interpreted it.

So, to make a long story short (as if I’ve ever done that before) [OMG, Déjà vu] I’m going to kind of start over with this blog. I’m going to try and pick up where I left off before I spent a couple months traveling down a road that led us to where we are today, but not to where we want to be. I’m currently working on a bit of an outline that would make Mrs. Pomplin proud. The idea is to provide a rough roadmap for where I want all of us to head on our shared journey. But unlike most of my prior roadmaps, I’m perfectly willing to head off on side-adventures, with posts that seem to make sense at the time. But with the outline/roadmap I’ll be able to decide if we’re headed to a new destination or if we need to return to the main road and continue where we were headed when the side-adventure is complete.

So this is the final post in my 12-part series on Work Live IMbalance. If you haven’t read the other posts, don’t worry, I can sum the entire series up pretty succinctly:

Life and Work will always be in a state of IMbalance. You just have to figure out how to swing the teeter totter back the other way when you need to.

 See, it is possible for me to be succinct!