So. About two months ago my blogging routine was interrupted by some family sickness which really hosed our summer in a lot of ways. I’m glad I can be glib about it now, as I think it is mostly over, but wow, it was quite an unexpected derailment from what was initially shaping up to be a lovely summer. In a nutshell, my kid caught a nasty virus out of the blue that has taken a long time to recover from. (Food-borne? Pool-borne? We’ll probably never know.) I’ve thanked the universe a million times (and counting) that it has all been resolving well (if slowly) and I’ve been sharply reminded that there’s just no guarantee that tomorrow will be anything like today.
In a perfect world I would have been disciplined and gotten back to blogging weeks ago, but re-starting can be hard. Once I’m out of a groove it can be murder to get back into it. So I’ve been fretting the last several weeks about how I’d finally get back into the saddle with blogging and work and a crap-ton of other things I’m behind on at the moment.
Well, in some combination of luck and good timing, I found myself diving into a fun new project that seems like the perfect vehicle for blog re-entry. It’s still a little embryonic, but if you’ll pardon my dust I’d like to introduce you to a new small business podcast I am producing, Self-Employed Happy Hour. I describe it as follows on my Ustream profile: “Business coach and author Peri Pakroo and her weekly guests talk about self-employment, small business, freelancing, and related topics like road tripping, parenting and procrastinating.”
I’m currently planning to air Self-Employed Happy Hour live every Wednesday at 9pm MST. (Yes, when you’re self-employed and have little kids, happy hour starts on the late side.) After the live show it will be downloadable from iTunes. We’ve done two so far, and I’m not quiiite ready yet with the final downloads and links, but I’ll post them on this blog in the next few days. Here’s some info on the two we’ve done:
- On Wednesday this week I interviewed Giovanna Rossi, owner and president of Collective Action Strategies, “a woman-owned consulting firm dedicated to working with public and private sector agencies and groups to improve the health and lives of women and families through strategic planning, policy development, social marketing, and training.” Giovanna and I both have little kids so besides discussing the ins and outs of her business, we also talked about being a self-employed mom quite a bit.
- Last week I interviewed David Dabney, principal of Red Rooster Creative, which specializes in developing custom WordPress sites and managing Google AdWords campaigns. I’ve collaborated with him forever — years ago on print projects (Dave was a godsend when interacting with printers) and these days on digital projects and online marketing tools like Google analytics. He has been my go-to tech guy for years (someday I will stop calling you with Photoshop questions Dave) and he manages my site too.
I’ll do a more official announcement/launch in a week or so, once we’ve ironed out more of the technical kinks. Rest assured it’ll be easy to find and follow if you’re so inclined. I’m 99.99% sure we will do our next one next Wednesday sometime close to 9pm MST so stay tuned to this blog for a link.
I tip my hat to my friend Chris Burnett for inspiring the idea for this show and for helping me a ton with all my questions about setting it up. For the last six years Chris has hosted a podcast called Ten Drink Minimum which is mostly just a fun weekly talk show about whatever comes up. I quote: “We drink, we talk, we record it and probably sound awful. Except we don’t care.” Just recently Chris came up with an idea for another show that he roped me into co-hosting, which we’re calling Talking Bad and involves discussing the current week’s episode of the awesome show Breaking Bad, which as many of you know is set right here in our fair city of Albuquerque. Both podcasts are downloadable at iTunes. Thanks a million Chris for all your help!
It feels great to be getting my blogging feet wet again and to be navigating the new waters of podcasting. Please accept my apologies for checking out so abruptly and for so long, and I really hope you will enjoy my new show. Once I get it rolling in the upcoming weeks, I’d love your feedback as it develops.