November is the Cruelest Month

With apologies to T.S. Eliot, let me celebrate November.

I’ve been doing biz-planning in November for over 30 years now. When I had the nursery, it was a time to decipher the hastily scribbled notes on tags, notebooks etc that accumulated about sell-out dates for varieties, improvements needed and noted in the heat of sales season etc etc. It was the time for new plant searches for our specialist nursery and time for taking a deep breath and holidays.

Not much has changed.

I’m still doing biz planning and evaluating results from this previous year. LIke discovering that selling deeply discounted books to big box chain stores like Home Depot doesn’t make an author all that much money per book and is largely a waste of my time compared to other sources of income. Like examining the entrails of my Net stats packages and discovering how readers really use my sites rather than what “consultants” and other experts tell us how people use the Net. Like figuring out the how and why of Google (interesting little stat here – did you know that Canadians watch more youtube video per capita than any other nation?) And looking at my video stats – more males than females watch video according to those stats – does this change the way you make video? Like watching the stats packages register a million page views in May and doing the biz-planning activities to have that number go to 2 million next year.

I’m planning my gardens. Big time. Have arranged to visit some friends and raid that nursery for plants (more in the spring when this happens) to populate the entire place.

I’m taking some holidays. Ignoring the world around me.

I’m evaluating every part of my Net work in great detail (the Net lets you do this) and I understand a lot more about my reader decision-making now. So in order to help my readers, I have a plan for improving the sites next year based on responses they made this year. I’m also working on some fun projects that will push what I’m doing beyond their current levels and teach me some interesting things. I’m at the point in my career where the projects have to be fun to get my attention – they have to make money but they primarily have to challenge and interest me.

I’m not writing a lot on this blog. Frankly, I have absolutely no idea why I want to blog or what it does. I’m rethinking the entire blogging topic for the Nth time and adding social networking to that list for re-evaluating as well. Bottom line – don’t expect a lot of writing in November while I sort all this out in my own head. As most of my readers know, I don’t follow the herd when it comes to these things and I do tend to wander hither and yon in this area. And, I may indeed have other options by next year to this kind of thing – who knows.

But mostly I’m dreaming and and planning for next year’s Net gardening adventures.

Stay tuned. Or not (heck, you’re in charge of this channel)