I hate being irregular as much as the next person

by Melinda Folse

About this blog . . . (what did you think I was talking about?!?!?!?)  I have a confession to make. I’m an irregular blogger. No, wait. I’m a very regular blogger. Just an irregular poster.

But this time, there really are extenuating circumstances you should know about (and, in the immortal words of Roseanne Rosannadana, “It’s alllllllllways something!”). Over the past few weeks I have been on the road with the book, visiting retailers, participating in expos and gatherings, and talking to tons of people about Midlife Horses. I have also been pitching a blog tour, writing some articles that with any luck will get picked up by a variety of women’s magazines, fielding a bushel of book inquiries, and following up on a variety of ideas for sharing the message that compelled me to write The Smart Woman’s Guide to Midlife Horses in the first place.

But that wasn’t the time consuming part.

As you may have noticed if you’ve visited my site, I’ve been hard at work once again with Bo Parker of ThinqDesign to make this website a better place to store the information and resources we’re generating and gathering, create a better interface and processes that will help us continue to strengthen our social media connections, and assemble the tools and systems we need to keep reaching out to others out there on the Midlife Horses trail.

And, while all that was going on,  I’ve also been working with Joyce Elliott, Dog and Pony Show TX, who filmed, edited and produced our official book trailer and four small videos that highlight the Fun, Friendship, Fitness, and Fulfillment we tend to discover with the help of our midlife horses.

It’s all been quite an education for me, and, thanks to the combined talents of these two remarkably talented individuals, I’m very happy with the results (and I can’t wait to hear what you think!) Although I’m still loading content on the site (it’s always going to be a work in progress), it’s now close enough to re-launch. And I do love feedback, because the only real way to know how effective these online things are is hearing from the people who use them!

My dream and driving motivation behind all this scurrying around? To build  this Midlife Horses community into a true gathering place for our stories, insights, resources and inspiration. To give us a place to hang out, compare notes, and gain the support we need to keep going. To emphasize the great cocktail napkin truth I posted on our Facebook Page a while back, “I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy; I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” It turns out there’s good company on this trail, and the more we can help and encourage each other (and make each other laugh till wine comes out of our noses), the more rewarding the whole thing’s going to be.

So here’s the thing. A  lot of cool, thought provoking stuff has happened over the past two months, stuff I wanted to write about, examine, question, and share. More and more, I’m realizing that this book really is touching women’s lives and encouraging them to think differently about their own dreams and what they’re willing to do to rediscover their own kind of joy.

Because of the magical way this book’s own journey is unfolding, I think it’s important to keep these posts to their correct dates and chronology. But with my time and attention stretched thinner than Elastagirl ever since production cranked up on our book trailer video and website redesign and relaunch, I’ve been saving up these tidbits until I could figure out how to get them all into place without spamming your inbox, but still let you know about them so you can read them if you want to, and then archiving them properly, just in case any of us want to revisit them later.

I’ve flirted with a lot of solutions, but none of them seemed quite right. Most of these posts (especially the October ones) have been sitting around in some stage of completion for weeks. Now it seems November has given me the slip as well. We all know December has wings, and it touches down tomorrow!

So here’s what I’ve decided to do. As soon as I get October loaded, I’ll post an October Digest that will give you a snapshot of what these posts are about, along with a link to each full post in the archive. Then I’ll follow suit with November. Then, with any luck at all, there will still be enough December left to grab its coattails before it sails out of 2011 to the Great Big Archive in the sky.

Fair enough? If anybody has a better idea, I’ll be glad to hear it. In a perfect world, I’d send a weekly digest until I get caught up, but with the year end looming and a lot of time sensitive information hanging, that’s just not going to work. I want you to be able to get to all of it now, if you’re interested, and move along to the next topics (and I’ve got some great ones planned for the New Year!) if you’re not!

I also welcome any suggestions to what would make this blog and our Facebook community a place you’d like to visit regularly, contribute to often, and use as a resource as you share your own stories to help, inspire or amuse others. Selling books is a nice thing (and it does keep the electricity flowing to my computer), but my real purpose here is to build a community, so to that end, let’s talk about what else I can do to help make that happen!

Book info News The Smart Woman's Guide to Midlife Horses