2023. Let’s go.

Semester hasn’t quite started yet but the flurry of activity around teaching prep, updates, scheduling, and program launch are happening. It all feels busy but vaguely normal – and for that I’m grateful. Let’s give ‘unprecedented’ a rest this year. As with 2022, I’m hoping the year holds no major change and strives to leave me bored. The fact that I never get bored notwithstanding, a quiet year would be welcome. The feature image I chose for this post is definitely the 2023 vibe for me so far. 

That said…

Moving out

Jonathan and I, as The Research Whisperer (RW), have kicked off the year with some significant news in the form of ditching Twitter and Facebook as our channels of communication with our community. We’ll be investing more time in Mastodon and LinkedIn – here’s the post about it. It feels like a big thing to walk way from Twitter especially. We have over 53K followers there and it was our favourite platform since we started the entire project in 2011. I had angst (surprise!) about how it might be a risky move, but when I took that anxiety apart and thought through what was really ‘at risk’, I realised there wasn’t much to worry about.

Will we fade into obscurity? No, our blog will be doing what it has always done. Our socials will be more fractured but the people who like our stuff will always find us.

Our profile won’t grow as fast or reach as many as it did before? Meh. RW has always grown beyond our expectations (the glory of having no expectations) so everything is icing. 

We can be like that niche band that only a few people love, but those people are rabidly loyal and appreciative. I could live with that. 

Cosy chats with wise friends

The other RW related thing that’s happening soon is that we’ll be in conversation with our buddies Bec Evans and Chris Smith from Prolifiko (pictured left).

We’ve known Bec and Chris for years now, as social media buddies, guest posters on RW, and occasional writing coaches for ourselves! This will be the first time we’ll actually be sitting in a (zoom) room together, though, and that is both daunting (we’re not worthy…) and exciting. It is a privilege in my working life to have met so many wonderful colleagues and  there is nothing more fabulous than finding folks like Bec and Chris who are authentic, fun, always supportive, and know their stuff through and through. You can register for the 14 MARCH chat here: How to feel good about your writing.