So, I have two main websites:

1. www.ThePolyBlog.ca — aka this site, which has a bunch of blogging stuff that I do. There are lots of subjects, and it has generally reflected the tagline / slogan — My view from the lilypads.
2. www.PolyWogg.ca — aka my writing site, The Writing Life of a Tadpole, which has been primarily been about HR and a bit of other stuff.

I’ve played with the sites over the years, moved stuff around, even debated the locations of certain types of files. However, that’s not surprising…how can the PolyWogg site be about my “writing”, yet I have over a million words on the ThePolyBlog site? Isn’t that writing too?

The funny part is that I asked for advice from friends some time ago, and one who has a marketing background saw it very clearly — PolyWogg was my professional writing stuff, ThePolyBlog was my personal stuff. I didn’t quite see it that way, too far in the weeds, but it was compelling if a little bit too early to commit.

The challenge was what to do with about 200 blog posts that rode the line between the two.

My dual life confuses even me

Take, for example, some blogs I have written about life in government. It’s not exactly about my HR guide, but it’s not unrelated either. I wrote about Phoenix audits, and audits in general, and how they work in government. But then the question — is that me writing about professional topics, as I do intend to do some writing on a series of government-related topics? Or is it me blogging about a current issue that I just happen to know more about than the average bear?

Or some articles about performance measurement or libraries, both of which I will write about in the future. Those are a little more related to future PolyWogg guides, and if I already had those guides written, these blog posts would clearly be housed in the same area as the guides.

Astronomy presents a different challenge. I write about MY experiences with astronomy, clearly a personal area, and thus clearly it should be on my personal site, right? Except I also intend to write a multi-stage PolyWogg Guide that will draw on a lot of those blogs, and like with performance measurement, if the astro guides were already done, then astro blogs would clearly go with them, right? I’d be blogging in support of my astro guide. It gets more complicated when I think about astro PHOTOS. I generally publish ALL of my personal photos on Flickr with links to my website, EXCEPT if I’m doing an Astro Guide, shouldn’t my astro photos be with it? Particularly as all of the photos in the guide will come from the same galleries.

And then just to really confuse things, I do book reviews. Almost EVERY writer out there who writes their own stuff AND also does book reviews keeps the book reviews on the same site as their own writing. Except I don’t really see it that way. My book reviews are just me writing about what I thought of the book, it isn’t something I’m doing to market myself or anything else. So, since they are more like my own book diary than anything to do with writing, I feel like they should clearly be on my personal site. Along with TV, Podcast and Movie Reviews. Seems logical to me.

Except I’m also doing music reviews of decades, which I will turn into books/PolyWogg Guides. So theoretically the music blogs should be with the future Guides and thus on my writing site where the books will be…yet then all my reviews aren’t together. I feel the same way about recipes — they’re mainly personal, but perhaps, someday, I’ll publish a collection of them…is that enough to put them all on the writing site?

I know what you’re thinking

You’re likely thinking that I’m being overly anal-retentive and over-thinking it all. But it does bear some thought.

When I came back from Bouchercon, I came back with a renewed sense of “writing” purpose. I am closer to retirement, and I have very concrete plans. Some of that starts with my PolyWogg site as my primary professional writing site, as my marketing major friend suggested as a way forward.

And here’s the weird part. Over the last year, I moved almost 140 posts from PolyWogg to ThePolyBlog so that PolyWogg was very clearly focused on my HR guide and a little bit on my Astronomy Guide. I spent a lot of time cleaning up the posts, keeping it lean. Then, after attending BoucherCon2025, I realized that a lot of content that I moved away are actually better placed back on PolyWogg and that I should start arranging my menus better. I have more content already written than I thought, across a broader spectrum of topics that will mushroom after I retire.

And if I’m frank with myself, likely before I retire. Or at least sooner than my original planned retirement date, regardless of when my date actually turns out to be. It’s in a state of flux at the moment.

So, this past week, I found 185 posts that I needed to move back. It could be another 300 if I moved my book reviews, which I’m not going to do. Another 300 if I included all my TV posts and reviews over the years, but again, those will stay with my personal site. I could probably conjure up another 30 things that COULD go to the writing site, but I feel like I’m moving towards the writing site only being those things that I intend to publish in some form other than my website, or at least are linked to similar publishable content.

But the truly funny part? I moved it around not that long ago, it made perfect sense to me, and this weekend, with a new “vision”, I moved it all back plus some more.

Even I don’t understand the nature of my digital duality. But I’m starting to, I think. Heck, I even ordered new business cards that say “writer, blogger” that I quite like even if I’m not using them yet.

Yet, partly as part of my retirement plans and partly as a result of Bouchercon convincing me that I need to be more entrepreneurial and perhaps more media-savvy with my approach, I’m working on ideas for a third site focused exclusively on a more marketable niche. I’ve been toying with some separation of content to prevent overlap between the non-fiction, fiction, and media-friendly stuff, even to the point of considering alternate noms de plume and trade names to protect some of my life from the net. But I know too that some of that is a fear that one of the three will fail i.e., I know the non-fiction is solid, but maybe the fiction won’t take off as I hope, or that the media-friendly stuff will fail spectacularly. Old-style concerns in publishing used to recommend using different names for each bit so that any failure in one area wouldn’t hurt your brand in another, but well…I am my brand. I’m PolyWogg. Have tail, will hop and type. Read, ribbit, repeat. If I want to really overthink things, there are MULTIPLE rabbitholes in the three areas to avoid or embrace.

But my first two sites are (not quite) locked and loaded, and I’m working on the third. I may not know ALL the versions of me yet, but I know the core one.