Not that I get a huge number of comments anyway, but just wanted to let regular readers know this blog underwent a huge spam attack on Aug. 22, so I disabled the comment function.

Trying to get it back but having difficulty. If you are champing at the bit to comment, thanks for your patience.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Up until a week or so ago, I felt I was playing a massive game of catch-up following our cross-country move and completion of our new house in Washington. I purposely lined up a slew of new Q&A interviews with story practitioners to run during this period when I felt I might not have time to meet my personal commitment of 7/365 blog entries.

During some of its life, the purpose of this blog has been to curate storytelling news and bring it to the attention of fans of applied storytelling. That’s a purpose I mostly haven’t been able to fulfill during these hectic months. Fortunately, other bloggers/tweeters like Gregg Morris, Michael Margolis, and Cathryn Wellner are doing a better job with that function than I’ve been able to.

Another function I’ve tried to fulfill with this blog is to synthesize and analyze story news. To find connections among various items about storytelling. To speculate about what it all means. To look at one story application and imagine how it could be applied to a different function. We could call this process “remixing” timely story topics.

I also noticed recently that readership of this blog is down significantly over last year. Speculations:

• Natural attrition that probably happens to most blogs.
• Readers are tired of the Q&As. I was running a lot of Q&As at this time last year, though, when readership was higher.
• Readers see my entries as lame and/or rushed.
• Readers prefer to get their story news sooner — hot news as opposed to warmed-over.

I employ several techniques for keeping up with the storytelling world and have kept all these communication channels open during the time I’ve been preoccupied. I could simply skip the last five months during which I was not consistently monitoring the storytelling world. After all, in the social-media world and the blogosphere, content becomes stale incredibly quickly.

But maybe I can revisit story content from the last five months and add a new twist, a new insight, a new synthesis, a new application.

Let’s try it and see how it goes. I welcome your input and feedback.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Nothing has tested my resolve to blog 7 days a week more than my move from Florida to Washington state, currently under way. I’ve missed a few days in March and early April, especially in the last week. The last-minute packing, closing on our house, and cleaning it for the new owners comprised last week’s excuses. This week, it will likely be spotty access to power and Internet as we RV across the country to our new home in Kettle Falls.

I’m sure it matters to no one but me that I’ve missed some days of blogging, but I felt I had to acknowledge the deficiency. Will try to blog as regularly as possible as we complete the move.

Thanks for hanging in there, and happy Easter!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

You may have noticed tiny icons that appear before many of the links in my postings. They look like the icons pictured at right — although not exactly like these.

An application called Apture is responsible for these icons. When readers mouseover the icons, a little window pops up with a snippet of the Web site, document, Twitter feed, or whatever. Thus, readers can check out the links without having to leave my blog entries.

I’ve actually had Apture for awhile, and these icons have appeared from time to time. Now, however, Apture has made it easier to insert the icons, so I’m experimenting with integrating more of them. I have a bit of concern that Apture is slowing down the load time of A Storied Career, so do let me know if you notice problems.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Sometimes commenters to this blog share information that readers probably would like to know about but might miss because comments are a bit obscure on this blog. Others e-mail me with share-worthy information. Here are a few morsels about recent entries:

• Barbara Ann Kipfer, author of 4,000 Questions For Getting To Know Anyone and Everyone, mentioned in yesterday’s entry about prompts and questions for life-story writing notes that she also offers story-prompt questions on her Web site.
• Also in response to that life-story-prompt entry, reader Lisa Rosetti shared with me a few of her favorite story-prompt questions: What’s always been important? What do you bring to the world? What’s next? And this question she credits to Michael Margolis: What’s the one story you have the power to change?
• Bernadette Martin, about whom I wrote back in October reports that her book, I Need to Brand My Story Online and Offline — Now What??? is off to the publisher and should be released soon. She also shared her take on holiday newsletters: “Since my daughter’s birth 12 years ago, [I have] written a newsy letter at Xmas but in my daughter’s voice. As she got older we would together identify what to highlight but I would pen it (obviously not written by a child). However, as she is becoming quite the writer and voracious reader in French and English, this year we made 2 major changes……we ‘canned’ the list of highlights and went for a story that in fact she penned for the most part (I did some fine-tuning).” The resulting story was about the mother’s and daughter’s Christmas Day spent in Paris.
• Another Barbara — Barbara Burke — expanded on Saturday’s entry about her business novel/fable, The Napkin, the Melon, and the Monkey:

Stories are used in two important ways within The Napkin, The Melon & the Monkey

Isabel (the wise woman) offered Olivia (main character) advice in the form of stories that had been passed down in her family from generation to generation. In truth, The 11th Problem, SODA (a metaphor for mindfulness), The Fighting Melons, The Monkey Story have their roots in the Buddhist tradition and are 2,500 years old.

Olivia used a story circle as a team building exercise to help her dysfunctional team work together. Using the story of the Fighting Melons as an example, she asked the team members to sit quietly in a circle and listen as each person told their story of the person in their life who had the most influence on who they are today. It worked. Once her team stopped bickering and started being more compassionate and supportive of each other, they rose to first place in a matter of weeks.

If any of your readers would like to use the book within their organizations for team building or as a tool for leaders to create better employee engagement, I’d be happy to share what I know. I also do speaking about using mindfulness in the workplace.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Merry Christmas to my readers who celebrate the day. Hope you’re having a peaceful and fulfilling holiday. May you make storied memories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve made some changes and additions here on the ol’ A Storied Career.

I’ve moved several of the long lists of links to storytelling blogs and resources to inside pages. In part, I made this move to shorten the depth of the main page so it will contain fewer entries — so the page will load faster for you, dear reader. You can still easily check out all the links and resources I’ve found for you by clicking on the links on my sidebar under the Pages heading. Just for quick reference, here are the link categories:

• Links to Interdisciplinary Storytelling Resources.
• Links to Organizational Storytelling Resources.
• Links to Blogs that Relate to Storytelling.
• Links that Relate to Storytelling and Career.
• Links to Other Cool Blogs.
• Links about Memoir-Writing, Journaling, and Personal Storytelling.

I also deleted a couple of small link categories that had fallen by the wayside.

As for the bling:

• I’ve added many more links and resources on these new inside pages.
• I’ve fattened up my Story Wisdom page, which contains many powerful quotes about storytelling — and now even more.
• I’ve updated and added to my Definitive Storytelling Twitter Follow List to give you ideas on storytelling practitioners and entities you may want to follow on Twitter.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any comments, critiques.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Quintessential Careers, the parent site of A Storied Career, marks the second annual Job Action Day worldwide on Nov. 2 — a day for job-seekers and workers to confront the recession head-on and take action steps to bolster their careers.

I want to run at least one positive story on this blog that day about landing a green/clean-energy job, “stimulus” job, or federal job; starting a entrepreneurial venture after losing a job; or landing a job using a cutting-edge technique — a technique you would not have used a year ago. E-mail me if you have a story to share.

Here’s more information about Job Action Day 2009:

(QUINTESSENTIAL CAREERS: DeLand, FL) — To encourage and motivate workers and job-seekers through flickers of hope amid the current recession, Quintessential Careers will for the second year spearhead Job Action Day on the first Monday in November — Nov. 2. Like the successful Job Action Day 2008, the 2009 event aims to empower workers and job-seekers to take proactive steps to shore up their job and career outlook, said Quintessential Careers Founder and Publisher Dr. Randall S. Hansen.

“While much doom and gloom still pervades the employment scene,” Hansen said, “hopeful signs of recovery should spur workers and job-seekers to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and develop career and job-search plans that work in a changed economy.”

Hansen points to employment leaders like ExecuNet’s president and chief economist Mark Anderson who recently declared “the question is no longer about when will there be a recovery, but how big it will be.” A new study by Deloitte (“Here today. Where tomorrow? Taking action in uncertain times”) notes that most executives feel a rebound will appear in the first or second quarter of 2010. Just a minimal part of the federal government’s massive recovery spending program has been spent so far, suggesting significant future opportunities. “That’s why job-seekers must gear up now,” Hansen said.

While the 2008 event focused on taking action in the face of a sudden economic meltdown, Job Action Day 2009 will examine such New Economy opportunities as green/clean-energy jobs, “stimulus” jobs, federal jobs, entrepreneurship opportunities motivated by unemployment, and “new normal” job-search advice.

“Job Action Day 2009 is a day to strategize plans for developing new-economy job and career options and devising new and better ways to track down job leads and position yourself for emerging opportunities,” Hansen said. “It’s a day to take stock of careers and develop a plan for next career steps.”

Quintessential Careers will mark Job Action Day 2009 with service-oriented articles introduced in a special Job Action Day edition of Quintessential Careers’ newsletter, QuintZine, to provide workers and job-seekers with information, ideas, and concrete steps to secure their futures in a changed economy.

The Quintessential Careers family of blogs, including this one, will feature Job Action Day entries and, as in 2008, will be joined by a cadre of career and job-search bloggers in blogging about the event.

Job Action Day is intended to empower workers and job-seekers to confront both a dismal economic climate and an upcoming recovery by taking control for a brighter career future, Hansen said.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Regular readers know I am spending the summer (and into October) in gorgeous Kettle Falls, WA. What I may not have mentioned is that we’re living in an RV while building our house here. The house will not be habitable until fall at the earliest.

As you might imagine, RV living can be rather cramped — even for two adults and a 40-lb. Staffordshire bull terrier — especially when we not only live here but run several Web-based business ventures out of the RV.

My workspace is about 4 inches from our bed when I’m sitting at my desk, so I don’t have a lot of space to spread out and consider materials for A Storied Career. I can spread them on the bed, but then I have to move them every night when we retire.

Today I set up an ancillary workspace inside the (very) unfinished house. This is where I will perform “triage” on materials I’m considering for A Storied Career. I love this setup — with the comfy chair (that even has little pockets for my favorite kinds of pens and stapler), the table to spread out the materials, sunlight streaming in, and cool breezes blowing in from the Columbia River.

As I began doing triage in there this morning, I already felt more passionate, fired up, and excited about future blog entries than I did while reviewing materials in the RV. My workspace and tools are exceedingly important to me.

Bloggers, writers, storytellers, practitioners — to what extent does your workspace influence your effectiveness and creativity? Is it uber important like mine is — or does it not really make a big difference to you where you work?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

… I broke my streak of blogging 7 days a week that I have kept up since Feb. 1, 2008.

Technically you’ll see an entry for yesterday, but it’s the daily literary quote that has run for a long time in this space; I freshen the date periodically so it appears on this main page.

Time to start a new 7/365 blogging streak …

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.