First off, I would like to thank anyone who participated or encouraged those participating in the
Unplug Yourself initiative. Support and well wishes make the process of lifestyle change far more manageable and a lot more rewarding. With that said though, this post is about the closing of the Unplug Yourself initiative – at least for the meantime.
The main reasons are a lack of interest and a lack of time. Lack of interest comes on both our and many of the participants parts. With the reintroduction of the initiative again last month, we received no commentary and none of the participants, ourselves included, have been posting updates. Now, I do not hold any ill will at all for folks who didn’t update - neither Brett nor I even updated this month - this initiative was a little confusing in its lack of hard boundaries, and I think some folks were generally confused as to what was expected from them.
When Brett and I were conceptualizing this, we thought it would be best to set up a separate blog, in which all the participants would be able to post on, and to treat it like a blog carnival – people pose topics that those interested would write about, it would be a place to answer and ask questions, a place to share tips, etc. The problem with this is, there is already a great blog carnival out there in
APLS (though of course, APLS is not “run” in the same manner we envisioned ours being “run”), but also, I do not have time to do this, and I suspect a lot of our other readers don’t either. If I didn’t have a job, things would be different. But I work full-time, I already manage this blog, and I do enjoy life outside of my computer, so we decided to try to make it work in “challenge” form, which was not the most suitable form for what we had in mind.
I guess in the end, the point is, it doesn’t matter whether we are “officially” or “unofficially” participating in the challenge for the changes and ideas put forth to stick with us. Though I have not been updating about my progress, I have been continuing on in the areas I wanted to work on. Over the past month I have been increasing my tolerance of colder weather and I have opted out of the Culligan water program at work. Instead now I wear more layers to keep warm and take a refillable Sigg water bottle full of home-filtered water to work everyday. So I hope you all will continue on – unofficially – with the changes you have been making to your lives. Should time ever cease to be an issue, setting up another blog to dedicate to this would be a real option that I would happily contemplate. Should we ever get really brave in the future, we will rethink the boundaries of the initiative and perhaps even reintroduce it in “challenge” form.
But for now, we are putting it to rest. Thank you all for participating, thank you all for your support, and most of all, thank you all for efforts to unplug yourselves, we’ve learned a lot from all of you.
'Til next time.
The main reasons are a lack of interest and a lack of time. Lack of interest comes on both our and many of the participants parts. With the reintroduction of the initiative again last month, we received no commentary and none of the participants, ourselves included, have been posting updates. Now, I do not hold any ill will at all for folks who didn’t update - neither Brett nor I even updated this month - this initiative was a little confusing in its lack of hard boundaries, and I think some folks were generally confused as to what was expected from them.
When Brett and I were conceptualizing this, we thought it would be best to set up a separate blog, in which all the participants would be able to post on, and to treat it like a blog carnival – people pose topics that those interested would write about, it would be a place to answer and ask questions, a place to share tips, etc. The problem with this is, there is already a great blog carnival out there in APLS (though of course, APLS is not “run” in the same manner we envisioned ours being “run”), but also, I do not have time to do this, and I suspect a lot of our other readers don’t either. If I didn’t have a job, things would be different. But I work full-time, I already manage this blog, and I do enjoy life outside of my computer, so we decided to try to make it work in “challenge” form, which was not the most suitable form for what we had in mind.
I guess in the end, the point is, it doesn’t matter whether we are “officially” or “unofficially” participating in the challenge for the changes and ideas put forth to stick with us. Though I have not been updating about my progress, I have been continuing on in the areas I wanted to work on. Over the past month I have been increasing my tolerance of colder weather and I have opted out of the Culligan water program at work. Instead now I wear more layers to keep warm and take a refillable Sigg water bottle full of home-filtered water to work everyday. So I hope you all will continue on – unofficially – with the changes you have been making to your lives. Should time ever cease to be an issue, setting up another blog to dedicate to this would be a real option that I would happily contemplate. Should we ever get really brave in the future, we will rethink the boundaries of the initiative and perhaps even reintroduce it in “challenge” form.
But for now, we are putting it to rest. Thank you all for participating, thank you all for your support, and most of all, thank you all for efforts to unplug yourselves, we’ve learned a lot from all of you.
'Til next time.