Thoughts on Moving Forward

I was preparing another reason not to blog for my reasons not to blog series. It was going to be entitled “My Blog has an Identity Crisis”. But I actually caught myself freewriting about what I wanted to do with this blog. Which triggered a memory of why I started this blog in the first place.

It was a place to empty my mind of things I wanted to get done. By freewriting, I could put things straight in my head. After a while, I polished these pieces up and added them here. Sometimes, if there were a process or a procedure I did not want to forget, I wrote about it and posted it here. If I found pages too important to be lost in my Delicious account forever, that was when I did link posts. And my lists of links were lists I used. I just thought I would add them here so they could be more useful to others.

But after a while, I forgot this and got caught up in trying to add quantity. And I read too many blogs on picking a narrow niche and keeping your posts focused. And now I have come to the conclusion that this is totally stupid. This site make hardly any money. I have other sites for that. There is no need to front anything here. And if anyone doesn’t like what I write then they have found the wrong blog. I have not written the wrong post.

And all this took to realize was to switch the focus of the post from a blogs identity crisis to who really has the authority to define a blog’s identity when there is no outside influence. By no outside influence, I mean taking the necessity of making money from this blog off the table although I will still pursue it here. I do have advertising available on my blog but will not let that influence what I write. I am no longer looking for clients gear posts locally or to certain topics.

Then the definition is mine to make and totally up to me. It is not a sink or swim situation. This is only for my own enjoyment and sanity.

I am not one to let life go on as it is without analyzing whatever I can. So I try to look for an explanation of how this happened. I guess I just have a weird mental makeup that let’s me fall back in the same ruts and have the same epiphanies every few years. It’s not as bad as it sounds or as cyclical but sometimes it seems that way.

For some reason, I fluctuate wildly between being fiercely independent to being a pushover in a social situation. I tend to take on the personality of people I am around. This affected me in my freelancing and in blogging here at this blog. Things I would be opposed at the beginning and rules I set for myself fly out the window eventually. I get really confused about the difference between what people want and what they really want.

And I have come to the conclusion that I need to stay away from idea people who have no idea of the mechanics of the field they are having ideas about. Because they know no scope, they know no priorities. And because they are idea people, they never stop with them. It is your job to be secretary and filter before you even work on their site. But you are never quite sure of their priorities and they never tell you so it is almost impossible to get a job finished. Because they say all they want is a finished product, but their definition changes as time goes on.

It is amazing how by segregating “my own thing” totally from “stuff people pay me to do” and minimizing the “stuff people pay me to do” allows me to make leaps and bounds in “my own thing”. I know it’s route and I spent the last 5 years or so learning the mechanics. And after last year, I have learned a little of my own limitations. I was that same idea person but I have some battle scars now and know what the land mines look like. When there are no big fires to put out, it’s just one foot in front of the other whether I get an hour or 20 hours to do my own thing each week and I can always see the progress.

For a while before this, I thought I was going crazy or slowly getting stupid. I used to finish things. I used like what I was doing. I used to see my goals. But I had gotten way to caught up in other people’s goals that mine got put way back in the back, back burner. And you know what, I made less money for it. There was no advantages to it. Except maybe to learn I do not do well freelancing.

I do well with “build a site and get traffic”. If you want a look, get a designer first. I may be able to develop, but if you want custom, hire someone else first. I like developing my own stuff. Only the pure reward of creating something you need is worth the bitch that it is. Creating someone else’s idea is a fate worse than death. I build fast and go live ASAP and then starting cleaning up, tweaking and adding things. My only method of developing. Gives you a chance to cut your lost time earlier if your calculations are off. Gives you a chance to start making any money to be made sooner.

Some people know just enough about the internet to be dangerous. They have ideas. But they have no idea of the process. Some things internet professionals do seem magic and a lot gets done in minutes. But some things like necessary, hardly seen details may take a week of work to finish. And it seems I attract these types of clients. Some do have a plan of action. But those that don’t or second guess themselves a lot will have you going crazy, running back and forth changing things but never really finishing anything. There is no perfect website, but they are going to build the first one the first time ala Duke Nukem.

My own sites follow an evolutional flow. When they are on my mind, I know what needs to be done and when. They just follow an order and time is not an issue because one foot will still be put in front of the other. I may never see farther the next two steps ahead, but the plan and goals are written down.I may think I can post three posts a week on a blog that is not and may never be correctly monetize but a few weeks later, the reality may be that that may have to fluctuate and one hell or high water post a week may have to be the goal. But those are the breaks. And this blog was just supposed to be a side product of that work.

When I posted here, I was excited to be working with ideas. When I stopped, that joy was gone.

Yes, while I was looking for freelance jobs, I bumped my rank up for local SEO and development terms to get jobs and it worked. But now I have let myself drop back out with a little restructuring. I do like the process of thinking on paper. I does tend to be vague and general but that is how I see things. The details tend to fall into place. If you read or learned about them somewhere, they find their places. I don’t work well with people at times. Never had the skill. But ideas and information, I am at home there.

So moving forward, I have some plans. Some old ones and some new ones. Nothing too drastic. But I think I broke another spell.

Who cares if the supernatural world is real or not? The real world can turn you into a zombie just as effectively