Some changes at Fresh-Picked, Freeattle and Seattle Natural Selection

Hi all!

Leslie here with some announcements about Fresh-Picked, Freeattle and Seattle Natural Selection.

We’re about a couple months away from Fresh-Picked Seattle’s third birthday. Freeattle has been around for about two and a half years, and Seattle Natural Selection, about a year and a quarter.

Between all three of the sites, there have been over 1300 posts and I-don’t-even-know-how-many calendar listings (considering each DAY between all the sites can have between 30-70 listed, you can multiple that out into the thousands). So much fun stuff to do and I’ve loved covering it all so far!

These sites are primarily a labor of that love and an investment on my part in a bigger idea that I’m continually but very slowly working towards. They are something I do outside a regular full-time job, and have been a major time commitment, but one I’ve been willing to make.

I am still very willing to make that investment, as I still love doing these sites! Right now, though, I need to modify it slightly. This is in order to free up some time for some other priorities in my personal life, but it’s also to shift the time I do spend on the sites to taking care of some other activities to help move these sites forward to something even more useful down the line.

I’ve been hesitant to take a step back from some of the regular posts because I don’t want to lose readers or be less useful, but I’m realizing that without investing this time in growing the sites in other ways, they’re going to stagnate. And without some room to grow and to find new ways to be creative, I’m not sure I’ll be as enthusiastic about doing this as a labor of love for the long term.

To that end, there are going to be some changes on the sites from now until the end of the year, and potentially for the next six months. I hope these won’t be too much of a bummer, but I think you’ll still be able to find what you like about the sites, just maybe with a couple extra clicks on your part.

And, if you’d like to see some of these features re-instated, please consider leaving a tip in the tip jar! Right now all costs of these sites are supported by me, and it doesn’t leave much for hiring other folks to regularly provide content. If enough regular readers could contribute just a buck or two, that would help bring back some features more regularly and allow the sites to expand coverage, bring in new voices, and more! So if you’ve ever found just the perfect event on any of the sites, please consider leaving a tip! Thanks!

So here are the changes…

• I’m suspending weekday round-ups on all three sites through the end of the year, and will revisit next year.
• Weekend round-ups will continue on Fresh-Picked and Freeattle, but will be suspended on Seattle Natural Selection. (I’m a little bummed that site has not really found much of an audience, but I still have hope for the future and plans to continue it in albeit a little different fashion).
• Calendar updates will continue on ALL sites (with a minor exception listed below). So even if you won’t see as many regular event round-ups on the blogs, you can ALWAYS check out the calendars on all three sites for things to do. Here are the links to the calendars of food, free and outdoor/nature events.
• There will be one slow week (little to no posting, no calendar updates and few Facebook/Twitter updates) in each of the remaining three months of the year, starting with this week (week of October 10) for October. The next week off/slow weeks will probably be around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Again, while I've hesitated to do this in order to not disappoint, I am hopeful regular readers will stick around as this will, I hope, lead to better things down the road.

Thanks for reading!