On Being a Reader of this blog

(Warning:  no splashy playground images today)

I discovered early on that I could either read other people’s blogs, or write my own, but there wasn’t time for both.  So I kept writing, and maybe that meant that I lost touch with what it’s like to be a reader, not a writer, of a blog.

For which I apologize because it was amazing to meet my readers in Toronto, and to hear you say that you consider me a friend.   It was an unexpected pleasure, and I can’t think of anything nicer. 

But you also said it was hard to figure out who I was!  When I first started the blog I felt quite uncertain about having my identity online, and of course never anticipated any success from it, so I just never talked much about myself.  So here it is:  I’m Paige Johnson and my email is arcadyatcoxdotnet and I’m a nanoscientist and a garden historian and of course a playground blogger and I’m also working on a book (due out in Spring of 2015) and building a modernist church on 100 acres of prairie in Oklahoma.  (Oklahoma, not New York.  You wouldn’t believe the number of people that suggest like, meeting up at Paley Park.)

And all that means that sometimes I don’t get your emails answered promptly, but never be afraid to write again, even three times.  (If you write four times and I don’t respond, it probably means your email was confusing or didn’t seem friendly so maybe just reword it?)  And sometimes, as this last week, stepping off a plane from London without having completed the first chapter I promised to my editor and facing a patent deadline and needing to make a serious decision about whether to launch a nanotech startup (I don’t know, what do you think?), it means I don’t get any playground posts up.

Thanks for being patient with that, and ESPECIALLY with the delayed launch of the correspondents and the provider index (if you’ve gotten those emails as well).  Hiring a big company to make a new website for Playscapes turned out to be an epic fail last year.  Confirming all my worst nightmares about ‘creative agencies’ and ‘branding’,  it was a shallow exercise in form over function that left me five figures poorer (I KNOW!  FIVE!) and wasted months of my time.  I’ve begun again, but still, it’s left me far behind on the nice new content I planned for you, and proceeding more cheaply this time also means proceeding more slowly.  But I’m hoping for an early March launch nonetheless so stay tuned.    

I say this not to complain—I’m congenitally cheerful, actually!--but because Toronto reminded me that you’re my friends.  And because it may yet be a few days before I can wrangle the patent attorneys and the investors and the architects and those-who-are-sure-the-fellowship-hall-is-not-quite-big-enough into some semblance of order and be back to you with more great playgrounds.    But very soon, I promise.