The game has changed

New rules govern my play. My professional environment is suddenly different. No one expects me to be “in the office”. There are no looming deadlines. I have no voicemail waiting for response. No conference calls planned for the day. Just the oh-so-minor responsibilities of working out the plans for a new business. Right?

I’ve been getting so much email lately that it’s hard to keep up with it all. Thanks to many for the encouragement and well-wishing which has filled my Inbox. The response since Friday’s exit day has been overwhelming. I’m amazed that so many people have read the clumsily written words of this site.

In fact, the traffic increase alone to this site has blown me away. Prior to mid-October, stopdesign.com averaged very few pageviews per week. Nothing exciting, and I bet most of them came from my dear mother. Following the Wired News redesign of October 11, and a redesign of this site 4 days later (and addition of this log), the traffic shot up to over 100 times the normal number of pageviews the following week. It was hard to believe those numbers. I thought my server logs had gone haywire. The traffic boost is partly due to some hefty referral numbers from the Blogger front page, along with a plug from an inspiring source.

I don’t plan to get knee-deep into a bunch of design work immediately. In fact, I’ll be pushing my hand at a little more writing. I’m using my liberated time this week to finally wrap up some articles I’ve been working on which deconstruct the Wired News redesign, among other things.