Submitted by innowen on Wed, 2006-06-28 21:01.

As you all know, D*I*Y Planner’s had a few changes the past few months. Doug’s got a new baby and is moving to a new locale, we’ve gained a few new administrative peeps to help out on the site, and we’ve lost a few staff writers. We’re still looking for a permament replacement for our Tuesday digital/analog writer (thanks to Chris Brogan who’s been helping us out with articles on Tuesdays in the interim), so if you think you’re up to the challenge of writing a weekly article that caters to our site, let me and Doug know.

However, we’re also looking for people to write articles for Guest Post Wednesday. To be a guest writer, all you need is an idea, and some spare time to write and submit to the site. Interested, but not sure what topics you’d want to write about? Read on to see a list of article topics we’d love to see on the site.

Here’s a few ideas I’d like to see written and posted on the site:

• Goals and Motivations
• Personal planner stories and experiences
• Thoughts on Project Management styles and techniques
• Best tips or tricks on switching from digital to analog systems (or vice versa)
• Life hack tips that incorporate the use of journals or paper planning in helping to simplify or making life meaningful

We suspect that we have some professional productivity and life coaches who read the site and we’d love to hear from you. Even if you’re not a professional writer or coach, I’d love to hear from you. Moms use planners, right? Well, what about sharing with us a list of tips on how to keep the family organized and planned so you can spend more quality time together.

If you think you have an article in you and would love to see your name in print, read our writer’s guidelines and then email your submission to me. I’ll read your submission, provide useful editorial comments (if necessary) and schedule a date for your debut. We’ll even help you post it, if you have problems.

. Guest - a visiting performer, speaker, or contestant, as on a radio or television program. There is a old saying vestiges

Submitted by dougj on Mon, 2006-06-26 15:51.

You’ll have to forgive me if this is a rambling, convoluted post, but it refects my current state of mind while I continue to pack up and prepare for our new life up north.

There’s nothing like moving to help you realise just how much junk and baggage you’re likely to gather over the years. Today alone, I’ve found a book on programming a Commodore PET (circa 1981), some early-70’s Avengers comics imbued with the piquant aroma of basement mold, four high-grade replicas of 13th century swords, some notebooks with my Breton language exercises, a series of embarrassing journals written in eighth grade (1983), a Duran Duran cassette, a crossbow and several quarrels of bolts, my high school graduation ceremony (in Sony Betamax format), and a strange black plastic thingy of uncertain usage that’s been following us around for the past four moves.

Although we’re travelling across the continent with an eye to starting fresh, we’re also collecting various bits of our histories lurking deep within our mothers’ basements, and there’s a certain trepidation at leaving something behind that’s a forgotten relic of our youths — perhaps pictures of us with elementary school friends, or a paperweight/ashtray specially constructed for a dearly departed father. These are links to our past, little glorious momentoes we didn’t know still existed, lying undiscovered. And the thought of these disappearing into the trash someday, their true value unrealised, is a cause of some anxiety for me.

But sometimes, when beginning a new life, you have to purge the old one. A week or two ago, I donated many, many boxes of books and web design magazines to a local understocked small-town library in central Newfoundland, as well as a hundred or so pristine VHS movies ranging from Kubrick to Hitchcock to …er, Ed Wood. It felt pretty good. Mind you, I still have about 40 boxes of books travelling with us, but it was still a significant cut.

Likewise, I’m gutting through old papers, journals, folders, everything I can find that we’ve been carrying as deadwood for years. Mismatched dishes, truncated spatulas, flaking Teflon pans… gone. In fact, the whole contents of our kitchen will be reduced to two small boxes. And who needs three copies of Plato’s Republic? All those cassettes I also have in CD or MP3 format? Twisting, writhing worm-balls of wires for ancient devices? All banished. Miscellaneous colouring pencils from high school? My old comfortable shorts with little to commend them by way of crotch cover? “Dummies” guides for the Internet circa 1993? Early 80’s transistor radios? How about my collection of Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew? All of these bring back little flashes of the past, most of them pleasant, but their intrinsic value has to be weighed with hauling them from one province to another, from one life to another. Most will wind up in little boxes at my mother’s next yard sale, no doubt.

It seems like this is something I should have done more often. Those cursed packrat tendancies of mine seem to view some sort of value or potential in everything, and I must try harder to overcome them. Sometimes that isn’t easy. My Commodore 64 I tripped across yesterday is still in perfect shape even after 23 years (it still has a working disk drive, too), and it did lead me down my current life path. Oh, so many painful decisions to make….

As an aside, I just wanted to thank the hundred-plus people who left me comments or sent me email to congratulate me on the new son and job. All those wonderful words of encouragement truly mean a lot to us, and our deepest appreciation goes out to all our newfound friends.

This is Doug, signing off for a week or two. The very able Innowen and Sardonios will take over the reins for the interim, and certainly deserve my heartfelt thanks (and yours) for their continuing efforts on the site. Please take care of yourselves, folks, and of each other.

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