Here’s my most recent column, now up at at Project Simplify:

The Not-So-Simple Life: Getting Back in the Game

by Lance Brown

We’ve already talked about how I basically shut down or dropped all of my way-too-many commitments to projects and organizations around 5 years ago. When I discussed that time (in my column “Flashback: Shutting It All Down”), it was mostly in terms of minimizing my “to-do” load, so that I could focus on the most basic to-do item: being happy and healthy. shadowheel_thumb

It was an act of extreme simplicity, in the name of sanity and well-being. And it worked!

It also cut me off from almost everybody that knew me.

Oops!

Since that time, my main form of connecting with the outside world (aside from a small cluster of friends) has actually been right here in the pages of The Simplifier. First, anonymously writing the sections at the end, then writing a couple of feature articles and opening Notes, and eventually bringing my identity and more of my voice into my writing of the In the News, Featured at Project Simplify, and Keep Smiling sections. When The Simplifier re-shuffled after 4 years or so, I took a much bigger leap into re-introducing myself and connecting to the world: this column, The Not-So-Simple Life.

As a result, while anyone who has stuck around through the past 5 years of this newsletter would probably—nay, have to—consider me a blabbermouth, the other 99.99999% of the world hasn’t heard much from me for quite some time. (Unless you’re one of the 20 or so Twitter followers of mine who seem to be actually listening.)

On an in-person level, things have been even more muted. In any given chunk over the past 5 (or 10) years, there were maybe 2 or 3 people with whom I had enough contact that they had any real idea what was going on in my life. Beyond that there has been a gradually-growing (but still small) universe of freelance clients, but their peeks into my real world have been obviously limited.

Until this year, I hadn’t advertised, or marketed, or done outreach, or networked, for a very long time. Nor had I substantially dated, partied, “gone out”, or the like, for the better part of a decade.

Folks who met me during that time period have naturally concluded that I’m reclusive, a “hermit”, etc. But for the most part, I was just working some stuff out. (Very slowly, apparently.) After about 30 years of hubbub, I took 10 years or so of quiet time.

But I’M BACK, BABY!

Read the rest at Project Simplify