Revamp For Revolution: A Blog Anniversary Post

Holy Roasted Butternut Squash Batman!  Today is my blog anniversary.  I've been blogging for four years, since March 10, 2009.  You can see my first ever post (about our first day living in West Africa) here. 

It has been an unbelievable ride.  I started out trying to tell the story of our little family exploring some of the great big world, but as I became sicker and sicker with undiagnosed Celiac disease, the blog became a journal of my misadventures and terrifying experiences with illness in a foreign land.  There are even long silences on the blog . . . those are the months where the illness was stronger than my deep passion for story telling.

As all my readers know, the blog's focus now is about battling autoimmunity with powerful Paleo tactics, the ups, the downs, and the emotional truth of the journey.  My whole aim is to use every story to share a little "data with soul" and hopefully help others get closer to ideal health . . . even if the starting point is overwhelming illness.  My passion is to inspire you to fight for your health and with a little luck provide you with some weapons for war.  I want this blog to be a loud voice for the health revolution.   

In that spirit, I'm announcing a huge blog revamp.  Over the next three months there are going to be some really big changes.  Don't worry, I'll be right here writing away and there will be lots of communication before I roll out the new format.  Until then, the following are some of the changes I'll be working on for readers.  I'll be migrating to a more suitable site.  You know, like one where I can do more fancy pants stuff  (is "fancy pants" a tech term?).  I'm going to be working on making the blog more dynamic by providing more video (we saw some great clips at the Practical Paleo workshop that inspired me), more pictures, and more helpful links.  To be honest, I heart the web pretty much as deeply as I heart Paleo, so I just need a place to share more of the awesome stuff I find everyday. 

I also want to work at making things more interactive.  I want it to be simple for my readers to comment, give feedback, seek advice and share tips.  I'll be working on categorizing and tagging, so that all these stories are easily searchable.  (Ugh, I hate tagging.  I've done a terrible job tagging.)  I want to work on using social media to make better connections between the story telling here and the real lives out "there."  After all, these are true stories, not virtual reality.  Finally, the Africa portion of the blog will be retired.  So, last call if you want to know what it was like to live in West Africa (and be sick there, hehe!). 

Here is your chance fans!  I would really, really love to know what you are looking for in a great autoimmunity/Paleo blog.  Have you seen particularly useful features somewhere else that you'd like to tell me about?  Are there topics you hope will be covered, maybe for the first time or ones you'd like to read about more regularly?  What kind of information is most inspiring to you in your personal health revolutions?  Are there any of you that are experiencing encouraging results and would consider sharing your story?  Let me hear it folks!

Happy Blog Anniversary!  C'est une révolution!