The future of my personal blog
I am in Toronto right now, in the middle of a Workshop Towards A Canadian National Water Strategy, surrounded by a number of incredibly smart scholars, activists and industry association representatives who have many, many years of experience studying and understanding water policy. I am in awe of the depth of knowledge and caliber of colleagues I am sitting with, and I am honored to be sharing the floor with so many passionate and great specialists in water. It’s also a very strong wake-up call for me, as an academic whose career is, despite my relative success, still in development. I am well-established in some topics I’ve done work on, but in others I am still learning.
I am still creating my research niche. It’s challenging, I believe, for anyone who strives to undertake rigorous research in any topic. I have, in the past five to ten years, been stretching myself extremely thin to try and maintain my finger on the pulse of the academic literature in four different fields: urban/industrial restructuring in clusters of geographically agglomerated firms, transnational environmental movements and their strategies to advance their goals, wastewater policy and cross-jurisdictional issues, and information-based policy instruments for pollution control.
The truth is, I sleep very little and work extremely long hours. I spend a lot of time reading a very broad range of journal articles, books and book chapters, working towards understanding the issues I am interested in. On top of that, I do my own research, I teach and I do consulting. AND I write a very popular personal blog.
I write this blog because I love showcasing Vancouver. I love communicating. I love telling stories, and mine in particular. But the truth is, as time has gone by, I have grown to realize two things: One, that most people don’t actually *know* what I do professionally, and forget that for me, this blog and social media in general, is my side gig. I do provide some consulting, teaching and training on how to use social media in non-profit, education and policy/politics. But again, social media is a tool that I use to advance my professional career.
But being a rigorous academic scholar is demanding more and more of my time, and I will have to devote less time to Hummingbird604.com, as time goes by and I take on more projects that advance my academic career. I need to devote more time to my academic work (I already devote Monday and Wednesday to my teaching, and Fridays I have now started devoting to purely research and not even do any social media).
It’s been a fantastic time and I’ve accomplished great things with social media. I have had amazing opportunities. But I think, in the relatively near future, my focus on Hummingbird604.com will wane (and hopefully, not stop). That doesn’t mean that I am no longer interested in writing about local causes (particularly charities), local businesses or even do media trips. Of course I plan to continue doing so. There’s even a few events that are coming up that I will be writing about (as you will see).
But the frequency to which I will be updating this blog, and the number of “yes, of course I’d love to blog about your restaurant/theatre/dance/non-profit event” responses the people who pitch me will be less and few-and-far-between. Today’s workshop made me realize once again – I *am* an academic (and a good one at that). This is what I do, and my personal blog takes right now too much time for me to continue doing as much as I do in social media.
It’s been a great ride.
Related posts:
- One month after the hiatus: on friendships, blogging and the future
- Ads on my personal blog
- My 2010: Focus on my personal growth
- On the personal nature of blogs
- Reflecting on the future of my blog
We’ll miss you Raul, but I’m thrilled you’re going to pursue your passions in a more full time capacity!
Raul my friend, you have given yourself so much to the community again and again without ever taking a dime and always at the cost of your personal & professional development time.
I think it is OK to step back and invest in yourself, I don’t think you can ever stop blogging because you are Hummingbird604 (believe that is not going away EVER!) but I think it is time someone said, I think you’ve done plenty for us so now what can we do for you?
[...] academic and “social media power user” Raul Pacheco-Vega posted a blog entry called The future of my personal blog. He noted: I am in awe of the depth of knowledge and caliber of colleagues I am sitting with, and I [...]
Your musings inspired a blog response. Let me know if/ when you figure this one out…
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2010/10/04/wake-up-calls-and-the-seduction-of-the-snooze-button/
Your plan makes good sense to me. Thank you for also being so receptive to Covenant House!
[...] up, we have a post from Raul Pacheco on the future of his personal blog. Most of us know Raul for his liveblogging and social media exploits, but that is not his primary [...]