In 2004, I started my first blog where I hoped that it would “last longer than other ‘ideas’ that i hav had…” and signed off all my posts with “xoxo“. It lasted for over a year and was my second big venture into social media (Neopets was my first).

After scoring a graduate job in 2009, I decided that until I started my role, I wanted to synthesise and discuss the information I was consuming and launched Cocktails and Crowdsourcing. I started talking about social media campaigns, privacy, and even World of Warcraft; but it wasn’t until I was academically referenced, presented at a conference, and has a heated discussion with a used car dealer in the UK, that I realised how important social media and it’s influence was to me.

However after starting at my new job, I got the graduate blues. I took five months off blogging and it wasn’t until I realised that I needed to HTFU and be awesome that I was able to be motivated to start blogging again. But even after I did start up again, my blogs were focused more on external content and things I am doing- such as the Telstra Social Review, Awesome Foundation, Deloitte, We Live Here Sydney, SXSW and Ignite - rather than thought leadership.

But this wasn’t a bad thing.

In 2011, my goal was that I wanted to become awesome, and I really was able to achieve most of the things I set out to do. I became a regional finalist for the Deloitte Business Woman of the Year (goal is to win it this year), gained so much visibility and amazing opportunities with senior people at Deloitte, joined Awesome and spoke at Ignite and Social Innovation Sydney, became a consultant, hugged my idol at SXSW on stage, became a mentor, met so many amazing people and generally became more confident in myself.

In the last year I have grown up a lot and looking back on my earlier blogs compared to the ones more recently, I have also grown up in the way I have been writing as well; which was one of my aims when I originally started this blog.

I feel it’s now the right time to start moving towards a new chapter and so I won’t be writing much new thought leadership content on this blog. 2012 is going to become the year I take awesomeness to the next level, and I want to be able to just do shit, rather than philosophise theoretically around the benefits. This isn’t the end of me blogging – I am still microblogging on different places, but my future blogs will be more of the story of stuff I’ve done and been involved with.

…although content around this will still remain extremely consistent.

Thanks for all of your support throughout the last year and have a totes awes 2012.