My blog was about to hit its first half-birthday.  How’s that?  Yes, it turned six months old on October 29.  I’d read plenty of material about how people who write on the internet choose to develop their web presence and had decided that six months and 63 posts later, it was time to grow up a little.  Shifting Piles had drawn over 4,500 hits in six months and that was with very little publicity.  In fact, I was hesitant to publicize it too soon as I had to figure out what was the important part of the branding process: Me or the site?

Shifting Piles was a great name.  I found it resonated well with people.  We all tend to shove things here or there when we need to.  Heck, even some of my favorite bloggers speak of shifting piles when donning slimming undergarments such as Spanx.  The Drunk-Mommy-Bloggers-Turned-Rehab-Bloggers shifted angst to Vodka to steps.  DIY bloggers shift messy mudrooms into Goodwill piles.  Everyone shifts piles.  So, I’m keeping that.  But, I have so much more to say…I worried about pigeon-holing myself.

I meet people and find them so terribly interesting.  The ex-con named Chainsaw (for his snoring) on the Amtrak from Seattle to San Francisco…he was a trip.  The swimsuit calendar model who saved my hair as a soon-to-graduate beauty school student at the Aveda Institute…I owe Alyssa a write-up.  The retired Wisconsi Department of Transportation fleet supervisor who decided to become a Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness outfitter on the Gunflint Trail who dropped us off at our entry point this past fall…there’s a story there.  Those weren’t piles to shift–they’re people to meet.

Besides people, recipes and reviews started popping up on Piles.  Whenever I wrote of Metablogging (blogging about blogging), it was really my Inner Marketing Geek screaming for attention.  And, I’d been meaning to put up a design website for quite some time, but the cobbler’s children often go without shoes.

So, Shifting Piles had to diversify.  That was clear.  But, how?