Some of the reasons I haven't blogged lately...

Forgive me reader, it's been 26 days since my last blog post. Here are some of my reasons:

1. Christmas - shopping (lots), socialising (a little), working (even though the rest of the country seems to be out to lunch), cooking, wrapping and planning. Who has time to write anything except lists in the lead-up to Christmas.
2. Children - two of them, four years old and little dynamos they are too. Not yet at school but already into the cycle of terms, holidays and the 'what week is this' lambada. Finishing preschool a week before Christmas called for entertainment, stimulation and seasonal events such as swimming, Santa and steering them cleer of too many 'early Christmas presents'. Oh and too much sugar of course!
3. Malware - the whole (and I do not exaggerate) of Christmas Eve was spent dealing with malicious spyware on my PC. I swear that's when I was going to write my blog! Honest.
4. PMS - enough said.
5. The time of year - perhaps it's performance anxiety but somehow articles and blogs written near the end of December really ought to be deeper than normal and offer some wisdom on the year just gone and the year that is to come.

Today it's 31 December. Wherever you look, online or in life, it feels that society, and everyone with it, is about to leap off the precipice of 2010 and into the great unknown of tomorrow. I pray we all land safely, without a hangover so as to be able to land on our feet and make a great start.

Talk to you next year.

slow and steady

Business is good for relationships, or at least in some way. Business takes time and working with someone, in a partnership or any collaboration, involves patience while you learn to understand each other and the objectives of the task. Sometimes clients are in a great rush and sometimes suppliers are in a great rush, with deadlines and economic realities impacting on the process of writing or designing or building or whatever.

However good business requires that we respect deadlines, even while resisting the compelling urge to take short-cuts, accept answers at face value, assume that we can speed things up.

Relationships and business are about taking and making best use of time. It is a non-renewable resource and absolutely irreplaceable.