Anne Truitt Zelenka

Shelley Powers is in the midst of refactoring her blogging again. That makes me bold enough to tell you about my own blogging plans. I can’t tell all, not yet, but I can sketch it out at least. And I will start with a little bit of history, because this is my blog, and I want to.

When I started blogging in summer 2004, I did so as the Barely Attentive Mother on Typepad. It’s gone now, but if you want to read some of it, check the wayback machine. It was about mindfulness (bare attention refers to present moment awareness as practiced in Buddhism) and motherhood and Maui, because that’s where we lived for most of the time that I wrote it. That was good, as far as it went–I chronicled my family’s move to Maui, our almost-immediate disenchantment with paradise, and our decision to move to Denver, the city of my childhood. That blog provided a level of connection to my family and friends that I hadn’t had before. It also introduced me to all sorts of thoughtful and interesting men and women around the globe.

In December of last year, I decided I wanted to write about technology too and I launched Anne 2.0 here at annezelenka.com. I picked the 2.0 tag because it was my second attempt at a technology career–the first being financially successful beyond any dreams I had but ultimately unsatisfying, because I never found a job that totally fit my personality and my talents. I met so many smart, interesting people along the way though, so I have no regrets about Anne 1.0. Well, perhaps a few, but you can’t read about them here on the Internet. I hope.

I’m still searching for a professional fit, as you can probably gather from what I write about. I’m thinking more and more that my professional world is technology and my talent is writing about it. But I can’t continue doing it all from one website, especially one so fraught with angst as Anne 2.0. My personal issues squeeze out here and there though I try to keep them behind the scenes where they belong. I don’t want this blog to become like a pumpkin left out on the porch two weeks after Halloween, fetid and oozing. If this is to be some sort of online resume, I need to control it better. But I can’t. I write because I have to and what I want to say, will be said. If I don’t I am miserable and I feel incomplete and overwrought.

I have a plan. I am going to separate off the technology writing into one professional and boundaried place that allows me to wallow in geeky pleasures to a depth that I haven’t allowed myself here because of a fear of alienating my non-techie readers. My writing about how to succeed in the new web-based economy will migrate to another place. That leaves me free to write at length on personal things here at Anne 2.0. If all goes according to plan, I will soon be able to direct you to new feeds and URLs, depending on your interests. And I will be able to invite back the family and friends that keep asking me, “do you have a new blog?” or say, “I don’t know what’s going on with you anymore now that you don’t have a blog.” It’s funny to think that now I have 400+ subscribers but the people closest to me think I don’t blog anymore. For their purposes, I don’t, and it’s a hole in my life.