For many years now, I’ve been posting faithfully here 3 times a day. This is a little notification, that from tomorrow, 1st July 2016, (just for the time being), I’ll be posting 2 posts per day. This is NOT because I’m short of material, far from it and indeed quite the opposite, I’m absolutely swamped in photos and things to investigate, not just that I want to research, but also a backlog of things sent in to look at.
Posting accurately and in detail 3 times a day, as you can imagine takes up my time each and every evening, and well, to be honest I’ve neglected some things in my life recently that deserve my more immediate attention and time. My family for one.
Due also to getting home a little later from a new project at work (cost control of the brand new Forth Crossing), I need to free up some time to organise the forthcoming Blantyre Summer Gala, maintain time for Blantyre Telegraph and the summer weather also means I should be spending more time in my garden, something I love doing. I’m also starting a small sideline business (unrelated to history), which I need to devote some personal time to. Finally, 2016 has seen huge progress in preserving all this material here specifically for people in Blantyre. How and where it will ultimately be archived, for websites come and go very quickly, books do eventually too, but my goal is to ensure all this written and pictorial history will outlive me by many generations. This is something I’m now working on with the National Trust for Scotland, not just in planned exhibitions but also using exciting interactive ways to preserve all this history and photos. Writing about Blantyre’s history in this level of detail and building a collection of this size has never been done before on or offline, and as you can imagine its taking up a lot of my time to ensure its in a format to be transferred to a permanent official archive for Blantyre.
I’m trying to say, just for now….I need to restore a better life/work balance, and slowing down a little here, by freeing up 30 Blantyre Project posts LESS per month, gives me that valuable time I need to spend with 4 year old daughter and my wife, at home and on holidays. Doing this, has been a weight off my mind and how amazing to have free time again.
I’m sure you all understand what an effort maintaining 3 brand new posts per day, 365 days per year for 5 years has been! In the short term, I look forward to having more free time on these light, Summer evenings and assure you Blantyre’s History Archive will faithfully continue to grow daily with fresh new content for a long time to come.
I’ll look at resuming 3 posts per day again in the darker evenings later this year and I promise you I will be writing about Blantyre, for many, many more years with fresh new content ALWAYS here every day! Thanks.