Maybe I have gotten a bit astray, maybe I haven’t but re-focusing can’t be a bad thing.

(transcript after the break)

That being said … I have been writing and sharing at Posterous a fair amount lately. What is Posterous, you ask?

Not only is writing/posting at Posterous dead simple – you can post anything there – PDF, text, video, mp3, etc. etc. – and they take care of the rest, but it posts everywhere I want it to – Flickr, Twitter, Facebook …

Why have I been writing there recently?

– Writing there gives me the ability to post while I’m mobile (being a Realtor I’m mobile quite a lot),

– Sharing pictures taken with my Blackberry is simple, and the sharing can be ubiquitous.

– Real Estate industry stuff that doesn’t fit at or isn’t developed enough for AgentGenius (the national real estate magazine where I write) goes to Posterous.

– I can post about personal stuff occasionally (I went hiking at Humpback Rock the other day) and not feel like I am detracting from the focus of RealCentralVA

– The ability to share others’ writing is ridiculously simple.

– It can be a more varied place to share information. For example, over the past week I have noted the recent survey about "prestigious careers," Redfin’s philosophy about open data, having a beer Blue Mountain Brewery after hiking Humpback (their new Pilsner is fantastic) and livestreaming of the Charlottesville real estate market update with Barry Merchant.

I started RealCentralVA as a place to share information about the Charlottesville real estate market, and I intend for that focus to remain. There just happens to be more to life than real estate, and Posterous provides the best forum I have found for sharing.

* To the person who emailed me, I responded but your email got kicked back.

Hey Jim Duncan with Nest Realty and RealCentralVA.com here in Charlottesville. I got an e-mail from a reader the other day and he had a simple question for me. He was wanting to know a good local surveyor. He had some land he was looking at. So I’m going to respond to him with a few local surveyors I’ve used in the past.

It’s nice to be thought of as somebody who might know the answer to something. I might be better than Google. But he ended it with – he’s a long time reader, long time commenter – and I noticed he hadn’t been commenting recently and he said something at the end, he said: “I still check in on your blog sometimes, but not so much since you’ve shifted away from being a local real estate blog to more industry focused.”

And it really kind of hit me like a ton of bricks because I never intended for my blog to be anything other than a local real estate blog focusing on Charlottesville and surrounding areas, land use, politics, real estate, growth, water, etc., etc. market trends. So I don’t really want my blog to be a real estate industry blog. I think it kind of reflects what I’ve been doing in recent years, but I’ve got something that I’m trying out that I think is going to relieve some of the stress that I feel to post industry thoughts on www.realcentralva.com and you’ll be seeing and hearing about that in the next couple of weeks. I’ve got a new tool that I’ve been playing with that I think is mighty, mighty cool!

So my apologies if any of you folks think my focus has shifted. I have not intended it, but here is my recommitment to trending back to focusing on Charlottesville real estate and growth, politics, land use, etc., etc. So thanks for listening, thanks for watching.

Please call or e-mail me anytime with comments: 434-242-7140 or Jim@realcentralva.com or hit me up anytime at jimduncancville on any of your instant messengers. Thanks.