When I closed down the website I used previously for business purposes, I intended to create a new presence for my business here at hazelbecker.com. I had agreed to work again after a two-year hiatus, thinking I would take on a small publication development project for Bloomberg BNA and then decide how to spend my professional time – the hours each day when I don’t pretend to be retired.

You can see how well that worked! I continued with the BBNA publication until last month.  I’ve enjoyed being back in the hard-news game the BBNA way, particularly helping figure out the best way to cover an esoteric subject succinctly and with very quick turn-around. The gig also included a lot of editing and training, other parts of my BBNA career that I found most rewarding.

During the same period I was working as a volunteer developing a new website to pull together communications for a nonprofit I belong to. It took too much of my time and dragged on forever, but now I see that activity also winding down – website launched, other volunteers beginning to step in and take over content development and maintenance on the site. Whew!

That brings me back to where I thought I would be by late 2014 – creating a new presence for Hazel Becker, Editing & Publishing LLC, my freelance writing, editing, and publication consulting business. I want neither to jump back in with both feet nor to disappear completely from the journalism scene, so I’ll need some income to pay my expenses and keep up with my profession. Clearly, this blog isn’t going to do the trick.

At the Society of Professional Journalists D.C. Professional Chapter’s freelance luncheon earlier this week I enjoyed helping a new freelancer begin to think about how she wants to market herself. She’s unemployed after moving to the D.C. area and would like to try her hand at freelancing rather than take a salaried position that isn’t really what she wants to do. She wasn’t sure how to get started, so we spent some time talking about how she will create a presence for her budding freelance business on the web.

Since I shut down my previous business website two years ago and haven’t cared about visibility until now, I feel lucky to have opportunity to start over. A little overwhelmed, yes – but also perhaps a little wiser, and certainly more familiar with website publishing and freelancers’ websites. I hope it will be better this time.

So, I’m looking at the new web presence for my old freelance business with a fresh eye, hoping I’m up to the challenge of blending business with personal on the internet. I hope you’ll see some results here this summer.