I’m saying hello from the island of Paros today. We’re feeling fully relaxed and filled with the warmth of the sun but I wanted you to know I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve had my fill of relaxing and reading books for a while and my mind is turning towards the blog and where I take it next. So I’ve put together a survey which I promise is completely anonymous, I have absolutely no way of knowing who has said what so you can answer it openly – and please do. I’ve opened it up to 2000 responses and after that it will close automatically.

What am I trying to achieve with the reader survey?

Understanding you better

I’d like to know a little bit more about you, how you’re feeling about life, the future, what your plans and aspirations are. As midlifers we’re in a state of flux and so is the world around us. If I can gain a little more insight into what you’re thinking, it will help me to understand what we have in common and what we don’t. This will guide me when I’m working out what to write about

Exploring new directions for Midlifechic

As I mentioned in my birthday post, I feel ready to move things on a bit here and when I understand you a little better, it will help me to know which way to go. So often you tell me in the comments that the thought pieces are the ones you enjoy most and they’re the ones that I get the most satisfaction from writing. I’d really like to get into more in-depth writing and discussions about what it means to be a midlifer right now. Some of that would be quite personal though for both you and me.

So if I add a new dimension to what I do, I’d look to open up a new way of interacting that would make it easier for us to have conversations rather than just a comment and reply. In order for everyone to feel comfortable it would need to be closed and protected. That way you could be as open as you wanted to be and for me it would keep it away from the casual scrolling that clients and business acquaintances often do which forces me to be more guarded in the things I discuss. I’d also need to be able to justify the time it takes away from my working hours so something like a subscription model – for those posts only – would help with that.

Don’t worry, if you’re not interested in those posts I still intend to keep writing the blog although I might not be able to manage quite as many posts. The new project would be something additional, an extra layer. This survey will help me to gauge whether you have an appetite for that or not.

Informing my retail work

You’ll see I’m also asking you a few questions that are retail related. Your answers will partly help me to plan my blog posts and they’ll also help me with my retail consultancy projects. I know there’s nobody better to give me a summarised snapshot of the midlifers’ view on retail than you.

My goodness it was exhausting typing all of that after ten days of doing very little. I don’t know whether I’ll have time to write about our island hopping adventure when we’re back but if you’d like to keep in touch and see what we’re up to, I’m posting now and then on Instagram Stories @midlifechic. There won’t be a blog post next week because we’ll be mid-air but I’ll be back here as normal on Friday 6th October.

In the meantime thank you so much to everyone who takes a few minutes to answer the survey, I really do appreciate it – along with your constant friendship and support.

Here it is x