Well hello there! Welcome to my new home at c2choices. It’s a new look and feel, a new locale, new topics intertwined with old. Let me show you around (and forgive the mess–98% done is done enough).

First, let’s look at the design. The inspiration came from several different places. Six Square’s icons gave me the inspiration to run with making categories visible and more robust. You’ll be able to easily find topics of interest, as well as pull feeds from a single category if you like (e.g., http://c2choices.com/category/mucking/feeds lets you subscribe directly to posts about poker). We made the categories verbs rather than typical names to add a little fun to it all (I’ll let you figure out where bokehing came from).

I wanted to move toward a cleaner design, with sites like Khoi Vinh’s Subtraction providing inspiration. Odds & Ends brought a more visual approach. I’m not sure how much of that really made it through to the final design to be honest, but I hope that images will be a significant part of this site. Rapid Eye Reality and CarmenSinCity gave me some guidance in moving into more life experiences, as well as Letters from a Small State and a host of others.

Some of the most significant content areas are still to be worked on. Get Goals! is a key section where I will spend more time on my own thoughts and experiences in goal setting. I’ll track my own goals, invite others to join in, and provide tools I’ve used as well as best practices. Hopefully it will be a benefit to me and others.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is one of my favorite parts of this site and something I want to do more regularly. I’ve found some interesting sites by hopping link-to-link from here, and I’d like to make that better and more interesting.

There are a few minor tweaks still to do (color, softening a few corners, moving links around, etc). If you don’t see your link, please shoot me an email at csquard@gmail.com and I’ll link you up. Believe me, it wasn’t any big judgment if you aren’t there, more my own fatigue in knocking it out.

The name of the site has changed, from Quest of a Closet Poker Player to C2 Choices (that’s superscript 2, as in squared). For long-time followers, you know that I try to put all of my struggles and emotions in the record of my posts. When I took many, many steps back over the last half a year, I saw that what all of this writing was really about: choices. It all boils down to what I choose to spend mental energy on, what I choose to do with my time, what I choose to do with my motivation, what I choose to do with my own fears and shortcomings. I’ve been pretty poor at choosing, more often choosing not to choose (if that makes sense). I hope this new direction reflects new directions and motivation in my own life.

I also hope that the new site brings more dialog and more people. A major reason I’ve blogged for close to three years is to connect with others, to chat and explore areas I struggle with. I hope this new site brings more of that, a broader community of people that doesn’t exclude my good friends.

So, welcome to C2 Choices, my new home. Link up, subscribe, let your friends know all about it. Let me know your thoughts on the design as well. Thanks to Paul and his team for dealing with me on the design–we’re almost done!