Since I split my Twitter accounts six weeks ago, things have been a bit quiet here for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, splitting the feeds has been a great help for talking to the people I’m writing for. I keep an eye on @edpmary at work, which has made it possible for me to have conversations, properly, without being drowned out by “irrelevant” noise – and it’s caused another shift in how I connect with people while I’m at work.

But at the same time while I’m at work I’m much more cut off from the journalism community. @mary_hamilton is being sadly neglected because it’s more important to keep up with the other feed – the one that helps me do my job day-to-day – than it is to keep up with the one that helps me work out how I could be doing it better.

Secondly, a combination of wedding planning, Zombie planning, impending driving test, a tighter work schedule and a bout of ill health have left me with very little spare time. If I push it I can fit in maybe four hours a week working outside work – tracking journalism Twitter and RSS feeds, reading blogs, keeping up to date.

And that is nowhere near enough. It’s hard to sift through the information to get to the interesting, relevant, thought-provoking details in that time, let alone read them, assimilate them, comment on them, respond to them, converse about them and integrate them into my own practice. There aren’t enough hours in the day.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I won a national award. I’m very proud of it and today I went to the Society of Editors conference to accept it along with my fellow winners. We were invited to sit in on the panel discussion on the future of local journalism – a handful of students and trainees in a room full of CEOs, editors and directors.

Something clicked for me in that room. I need to sort out a better balance here. It’s just as important for us lowly types who are just starting out to have those conversations as it is for editors at the highest level. We have to talk about the future of our companies, papers, channels, jobs, careers, at every level of the companies we work for.

We have to integrate that constant conversation as part of how we work. It’s a vital part of what we do, now – projecting the future, working out what’s next, so we can do the best we can to incorporate change – and even, some of us, drive it.

It’s not something we can take or leave. But it’s something most journalists have to compromise in order to get the job done. For many of us, the pressure is constant to turn out copy, to produce stories. We’re writing more stories for more outlets in more ways than ever before, but it is ever more important for us to update our knowledge, understanding and skills – to engage in theory as well as practice. Even the greenest reporter – even folks like me.

I don’t know yet how to integrate learning and theoretical understanding (and engagement with those communities) with doing practical journalism at work (and engaging with those communities too). Over the coming weeks I need to find a better balance so that over the coming years I can maintain it.