TL;DR: Going forward, Thought Shrapnel will be a bit more random.

One of the benefits of a pause in doing something for a while is that you get to reflect on its upsides and downsides. We've all had a chance to do this during the pandemic, to re-evaluate what we do and why we do it.

Every year, I take a couple of months off Thought Shrapnel, which allows me to recharge myself a bit and commit myself anew to the project. Usually, I come back raring to go and, indeed, have written some stuff to publish as soon as I'm back.

This time, though, was different. I think that's for a couple of reasons:

  • The #100DaysToOffload challenge has got me writing regularly on my personal blog again.
  • Having supporters puts pressure on me to 'produce' something worthwhile, when this was supposed to be a space for stuff 'going in and out of my brain'.

So, with huge thanks to those people who have supported Thought Shrapnel over the past couple of years, I've decided that I'd actually prefer to not have the pressure of patronage. As such I'm deleting my Patreon account.

I'm keeping the weekly newsletter, for the moment at least, which will probably evolve into a slightly different format than it has been. Bear with me as things might look a bit strange around here while I move things around.

If you like my writing, you might want to head over to dougbelshaw.com/feeds which is where you can see the latest posts from the various places I write. I'm still posting updates to Twitter, but am only interacting with people via Mastodon and LinkedIn these days.

Again, thanks to everyone who has supported Thought Shrapnel with their attention and, in some cases, money over the years. It's still going, it's just changing along with me...

Image by Denny Luan