[twitter]I am my own worst critic.

Before publishing anything, I will write draft after draft after draft. Rarely does something get written in one sitting and then put out. I will stir topic ideas around in my brain for days before I act on them, emailing myself tidbits, links, and angles. I have more than 40 drafts of posts sitting in the queues of my blog networks – and there are more than a few of them.

Currently I write for this blog, cyberbuzz.com, and DadCAMP.ca. The editorial schedule is what I make it, as these are my personal blogs. I contribute to Future Shop‘s Tech Blog a few times a month, and I write 5x a week for Babble.com. I developed the website for my Community Association, and keep it updated with local news and events. Until this week, I was also a contributor to the Global Calgary Sunday Morning News.

The obsession is not just before the content is created. After I push a piece, I can’t just let it lie. I analyze the traffic, I will re-edit the copy, I will tweak the layout. I am never really “done.”

My efforts are spread across a diverse genre of websites, not to mention the “real job” I have hosting the top rated midday program on XL 103. I fully subscribe to people picking up  freelance work when that work doubles over what they are already doing.  If you can work once and get paid twice, you come out ahead.  This tv assignment, however, was just taking up too much time.

My parenting blogs are easy to write because they flow from the stories of life with my kids. The tech stories, however, have been harder to create of late. It’s just a little beyond my sphere of expertise. I’m not spending 40 hrs a week playing with gadgets, reading trades, and analyzing announcements and rumors. While I understand the world of social media and technology, trying to come up with effective segments for the tv show was becoming more difficult and taking up too much of my brain.

I would stress about the segment beforehand, and watch it afterwards criticizing myself for missing key points, or stumbling through explanations.  It didn’t make sense. I had a week to create a 4 minute segment, but I couldn’t do it without getting anxious.

So this week I tendered my resignation to Global Calgary to end my Sunday morning stints at the desk with Reid Fiest and Bindu Suri on the Sunday Morning News.

The last one was a thrill, because of renovations on set, I got to suit up and sit behind the big desk where the 6 o’clock news is read and where ‘the magic happens.’

I love being on television, I honestly believe that’s where my career arc will eventually end, but I had to make a choice and this was not the right assignment at the right time.

This is the second time I’ve decided to leave a great tv gig. The first was walking away from Daytime on Rogers Cable. It eventually became Urban Rush for Shaw, and is now known as The Rush. Before it was Fiona Forbes and Mike Eckford, it was Fiona and Buzz.

Those two did just fine without me, celebrating more than 15 years together and growing a “little cable talk show” into a national brand.

I look forward to being in front of a camera near you again soon. In the meantime, I’m still behind a mic and keyboard.