I’ve spent a little while sitting here tweaking settings and adjusting layout on the blog, and I think it’s looking good.

The biggest thing I’m currently rethinking is content.  I feel I need to refocus a bit, find several topics I like that I can delve into further, and at the same time recognize who my readers are and what they might find interesting.

A hot topic right now is “personal branding” – that is, the presentation of one’s self whether that be in a digital or physical form.  As a job hunter, it’s something I’m conscious of, and with the high level of competition for jobs, the recent new website and other facets of my online presence have been one way I’m attempting to separate myself (if only slightly) from the competition.  Plus it’s been a fun project.  I think I’ve got a pretty decent and now nearly complete online presence that gives a well-rounded look at me, but the blog is really the one part that I haven’t made an attempt to professionalize, and I think I like it that way.

My problem with personal branding as it has generally been presented, is that it’s all too easy to lose an individual touch and personality in your efforts to create a persona.  The most notable example that comes to mind is someone I follow on Twitter who is a self-proclaimed personal branding expert.  I’d agree that he certainly seems to be an expert in the field – to the point that his online presence tells me virtually nothing other than that his profiles, blog, website, and book are all about personal branding.  The downside is that it all feels overly branded and manufactured, and I don’t really get any sense of who he actually is (unless he’s very one-dimensional, in which case I suppose I do).  I hope to avoid that extreme.

In that spirit, I’ll continue to blog about really whatever I feel like in whatever tone I feel like whenever I want to.  I just need to refocus a bit to figure out what sorts of topics will inspire my creativity rather than boring me for the sake of simply posting regularly.  Stay tuned.