Wrote a blog post last Friday! Saved it to my work email. Can’t access until tomorrow. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Ohhhhhhh, I want to write more. Ouch. It hurts. The not writing and the wanting.

I’ve been really occupied lately with adjusting to my new role as a copywriter. The shift seems to have taken up a great deal of mental energy – in a good way, but still a way that feels consuming. And it’s not just the new role, but also the new company and the new industry – I’m in advertising now, and that’s leaps and bounds away from the tiny web dev shop I worked in before.

This is all an excuse for why I haven’t been producing regular content for this website (I worked so hard to set it up correctly, only to leave it gathering dust). But the truth is that I’ve lost touch, somewhat, with content strategy these past few weeks. I still read my regular content strategy blogroll, I still follow content strategists on the Twitters, I still think about content strategy. But I’m not practicing it in a tangible way anymore.

This makes me sad.

This was the very concern that made me hesitate to accept the offer. I’m downright over-the-moon in love with my new job, so there’s absolutely no regret. But I was afraid (rightly so) that “becoming” a copywriter would derail my development in content strategy – a field that I adore, that speaks to my strengths, and that gave me crucial direction and validation in my career. It might be that last consideration that pains me the most. The shift brings a certain amount of disconnection and – well, this is starting to feel a lot like guilt. As if content strategy might ask me why I never call anymore.

My work now never involves navigation or information hierarchy or content audits. I don’t get to make sitemaps. I don’t get to make wireframes. Instead, it’s about headlines and subheads and body copy for print advertisements. And I truly love my new work. But I miss my old.

This week was supposed to be sooo productive. SO. PRODUCTIVE.

Instead, it’s Wednesday, and all I’ve done today is delete four different header images.

Ideas. I haz them. I don’t haz them.

Getting this website up and running again has been a bloody nightmare. Had to switch hosting. Had to switch domain registration. Had to reinstall the system. Still can’t wrap my brain around MySQL, no matter how many times it’s explained to me.

It’s been …six? months since I’ve decided to overhaul this thing, and this is where I’m at now. I’ve learned:

• that I have just enough knowledge to know what I don’t know,
• that not knowing things really pisses me off,
• that back-end changes take phenomenally longer to wrangle than I want them to.

Now I have to, you know, design this site. And then start actually producing regular quality content for it. Sure. NBD.