I know. Third theme in two weeks. Kind of obnoxious.

Unfortunately, I broke the awesome theme the site’s been sporting when I tried to upgrade it, which in turn broke the site. Once I figure out what went wrong and fix it, this theme will just have to do.

Thanks for being patient with me.

I’m finally starting to make use of my Twitter account, so you’re going to see more daily posts from there. Feel free to reply to me on Twitter or here.

In the next week or so, you should also be seeing daily posts from my delicious account (which is a mess, so you aren’t allowed to see it just yet).

But, don’t think that this means this blog is about to become nothing but tweets and links. I’m currently fighting off both a cold and the nasty stomach bug that’s been roaming around, so I’m not quite up to doing much more than reading and sleeping.

As yesterday’s tweet says, though, I have finished combing through all of my resources (and the digital libraries of two of the three local libraries) and read everything I’ve ever saved about information architecture. (I’m trying to be methodical about breathing life back into this site.) I have my IA plan of attack, and feeding my daily tweets over here is just the first part of it.

As changes show up, please feel free to tell me what works for you and what doesn’t, because while I am writing this to get ideas out of my head and into a space where I can review it, this is also for the reader (because people seem to think I have good ideas).

If you’re still subscribed or periodically checking out this site, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been absent.

It’s the age-old tale. First, I stopped being abl to think of things to write. Then, I had an identity crisis, and in the middle of the identity crisis, a lot of things happened.

But this might turn out to be a good thing, because I’ve given a lot of thought to what I want this site to be and who I am, and I think this place is ready for the long overdue overhaul it’s (hopefully) about to go through.

As part of trying to resolve the identity crisis, I started a secret blog to experiment with sharing more of the content I felt I should be sharing. I don’t know that I truly found my voice (or my posting consistency), but I thought I would move those posts over here and see what you guys think (those of you who may or may not still be around).

If these posts become your introduction to Rebecca Thomas Designs, then welcome! Leave comments. Email me. Say hi.

Anyway, things you’ve never seen before are going to start appearing. Don’t freak out. This is part of the flux this site will be undergoing for a while. Advice and behind-the-scenes help is appreciated!

With it being the ever-fun, ever-crazy holiday season, I’ve decided to reduce a small bit of the demands on my time by putting this little cluster of websites on hiatus through the holidays.

Please go forth and have a wonderful holiday, regardless of what you celebrate. Take time to be with the people you care about and to reach out to those you can’t be with.

Happy holidays! See you in January!

The short version of this story is if you need a freelance teacher, trainer, writer, or editor, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

The long version of this story is that with so much pressure on our kids to succeed, working in a extracurricular teaching center (and paying the bills off that paycheck) is becoming more challenging.

My blogs have actually all been suffering for the past couple of weeks while I’ve tried to figure out how to resolve this situation.

If we can get the pages working on this blog, then I’ll put up a page to help everyone understand what I can do for them (Basically, if you need something taught, either by a teacher or a written document, there’s a very good chance I can help you.) Otherwise, like I said, contact me with potential projects.

(This topic will end up cross-posted because of how I started blogging.)

The newest blogging challenge from Lorelle on WordPress asks for our blog’s story. Well, my blogs had a unified start, so it makes sense to start both stories the same, and then follow their development apart individually.

I was gifted with an online journal in January 2002, not long after moving to San Antonio after grad school. She had just met me, and was adamant that I should have this journal (She was doing this to her friends, and she decided the moment she met me that we were going to be friends. In an interesting twist of events, we no longer speak to each other.) At first, I had no idea what I was going to do with the space. I stumbled through a couple of random posts before discovering quizzes. Before long, I started writing random reflections and thoughts about what was going on around me. After a while, it became more a place to tell friends what I was up to. I actually started meeting new people through the community, some of whom I’m still good friends with.

A few months after being given this online journal, I was introduced to Curt Rosengren’s blog. It sparked something in me. I decided I wanted to write more than just silly little “Hello, world” posts. I set up a Blogger blog and started writing in it about personal observations about informal learning (one of my passions). Eventually, I started writing more about education, and then started writing posts about personal development, changing careers, and writing resumes (I was starting to realize I had to consider how I was going to reshape my career path. Still am, come to think of it. I was also spending a lot of time helping friends and family navigate their own career changes.)

After a while, I felt like I had no idea what I was trying to accomplish anymore. The Blogger blog was split up among three TypePad blogs: CareerNiche, DesignNiche, and EducationNiche. They covered the main topics I’d been blogging about at that point. People would occasionally stop by and leave comments, or email me. But TypePad had a series of meltdowns, and I became frustrated at not being able to write when I wanted. This blog dabbled briefly as a Drupal blog (which is where JewelryNiche became a blog, but someone mentioned WordPress, and I checked it out.

I can’t remember when exactly I moved this group of blogs to WordPress. but I remember it was a bit painful. My web guru finally used Multiply to get everything here the way I wanted. (Funny thing, we’re actually finally looking into MU, but I don’t really want to move anything until I have a design and a good idea how everything is going to change around here.) At some point not long after that, I started WritingNiche.

My motivation is purely internal. I need to be able to get things out of my head, and this medium works well for organizing discarded thoughts. Others read and link these blogs, and I’m very appreciative of that fact, and a bit surprised anyone finds this useful. My inspiration comes from life, my own learning efforts, and the blogs I read. The biggest challenge, especially now that I’m trying to reorganize everything, has been figuring out where certain topics fit.

Would I give up any of my Niches? Except for JewelryNiche (which is on an indeterminate hiatus), I don’t think I could reasonably give up any of them. To some degree, they all represent some facet of who I am and what makes me happy. I guess that’s all one could really ask for.

First, I’d like to apologize for the last month. Thanks to a series of bad storms in December and January, the local schools ended up with a weird end-of-school pattern. For the last month, my students have all been moving through various stages of final projects and exams. It’s been crazy watching the staggered schedule.It took up a lot of my time and energy trying to make sure everyone was wrapping up on a positive note.

Second, Dead Bunny is taking a break for the summer. I’d like to say it’s because my students won’t be around to inspire topics, but I teach year-round because I’m a tutor. The actual reason for the hiatus is because I’m working on a pair of special new attractions for the site.

The hope is that when Dead Bunny returns in the fall, there will be the first of several video tutorials. I’m already hard at work on the first one, but it’s the first time I’ve done something like this, so it’s a serious learning curve.

I’m also still working on putting together the book, and am hoping the little bit of extra free time I’ll get from taking a break now will let me get some serious work done on it.

Feel free to use the site in my absence. You can email me if you have any questions or suggestions (or just want to say hi). Thank you for your patience, and we’ll see you in the fall!

For those of you who are unaware (that would be the majority of you), my hard drive gave up the ghost Friday morning. It just came back to me this morning.

The good news is, I managed to back up the most important things that hadn’t been recently backed up as the drive was in its death throes. The bad news is that it never occurred to me to back up my application data. Fortunately, we had backed that up in December when the laptop popped a resistor, so reconstructing Firefox has not been nearly as painful as it could have been.

Reconstructing my music collection, on the other hand…well, let’s just say we discovered that the folder containing one of my favorite artists hasn’t existed in a while. I was planning to re-rip both CDs anyway. Now I have an excuse.

I’m also in a losing battle with an allergic reaction, so this whole experience has been quite fun. I’ve decided for now to take a couple of days to make sure everything is up and running, and to allow myself time to adjust to my new OS. I am happy to say I am braving the wilds of Ubuntu! (Thankfully, I have a very patient roommate who tolerates my silly questions.)

The blogs will return next week. I’ll try to blog a little extra to make up for losing this week.

If you’ve been following this site for the past couple of months, you know that I’ve been trying to take a good, hard look at myself and then try to pull my life into alignment with who I am.

I don’t know if I’m any closer to figuring out who I am at my core and what I bring to any table, but I am learning that some of my interests and focal points have changed. As a result, you’re probably going to notice the Niches struggling through a bit of a shift as each one gets refocused to match what I’m finding out about my own interests. This may show up as intermittent blogging, or a change in topics, or both.

If you see a Niche being unusually quiet, it’s likely going through some sort of growing pain related to all of my work the past couple of months (except JewelryNiche, which is going to move away and resume at some point).

Thank you for your patience and your support as I work through this.