Progress!

Just a quick note to say I'm celebrating tonight (mentally, mostly... it's a 'school night' and much too late to be drinking for real) because I wrote 10,848 words for work in the last 6 days. And, more importantly, for the first time since I started this job, I didn't sneak everything in under the deadline... it's all turned in the day before it was due and I haven't had any of it sent back to me for revisions yet!

That probably doesn't sound like much, but the learning curve has been steep and it's a lot to celebrate from where I'm sitting.

Hopefully it means I've turned a corner and will actually be in a position to do a better job of navigating and balancing time in the next couple weeks. I'd really like to get some posts written and up here bragging on how amazing My Prince has been while I've been slogging through word counts. The amount of things he's gotten done (and how amazing it all looks!) is jaw-dropping. So, hopefully soon... in the meantime, celebrating! 

100 Days of Productivity Update and Blog Launch!!

Way back in November I mentioned the idea of doing a 100 Days of Productivity experiment. Although it took longer than I'd hoped to settle on my plan for the project, I did eventually get started – I'm now 41 days in! Since I've had a couple people ask, here's what it has ended up looking like so far:

1. A Two Pronged Goal
   
   As denoted in a recent post, the first half of the goal was to get a part-time telecommute writing job. The second half was to launch a sustainably structured nutrition/healthy lifestyle blog to replace the long-lapsed Nutritional Mischief site. Together, I determined, these should:
   (a) Establish a flexible, scalable, and portable income stream to improve financial opportunities now and allow for a smooth transition later;
   (b) Resolve the problem of not having content that is legally mine to share with potential employers;
   (c) Document ongoing engagement/competency in the writing and nutrition sectors, demonstrating that my skills/credentials remain current, and keeping the line on future employment opportunities in both areas open; and
   (d) In the case of the nutrition blog, establish a constructive outlet for my nutrition geekery, which is good for my soul.
   
   
2. Simple Structure
   
   Given that there were at lot of variables and some erratic scheduling over the chosen 100 Days, I decided to make things as simple as possible. Anything that got me functionally closer to achieving my stated goals counted, regardless of the time commitment or complexity. Thus, on days when time/energy were at a premium, my 'one thing' was sometimes stupidly simple: searching for/downloading a checklist, reviewing and deleting or properly filling a previously-bookmarked resource I'd thought might help, or searching the job sites and bookmarking anything new that seemed fit to apply for. When I had more time/energy, I tackled bigger things: completing job applications, slogging my way through website formatting challenges, or writing (another) legally acceptable disclaimer. Admittedly, some days it didn't feel like I'd achieved much, but it was amazing at the end of every week to see just how much progress I'd actually made!
   
   (Confession in case anyone else tries this: I also gave myself some grace. If there was a day where I simply couldn't get anything done, I just made it up later and still gave myself credit rather than consider the whole thing blown. So far it's worked out great and kept things positive and effective!)
   
   
3. Learning From Previous Mistakes (aka Start At The Beginning, But Scale Back)
   
   I did a lot of reflecting through this process and realized that one of the reasons Nutritional Mischief failed was that I tried to do too much (often with too fuzzy an idea of the proper scope of things) and got overwhelmed. I also didn't front-load myself with the right systems, so the more content I made the more I felt like I was digging myself into a hole, which only made the anxiety worse and just created a big, nasty feedback loop. I learned from my mistakes: this time, I chose to establish my nutrition blog as only a blog, without any other business components. I also (thanks to this project) gave myself ample time at the get-go to deal with boring, stressful legal crap like proper disclaimers, figuring out the actual Official Rules for things like using images and linking to other people's material, and constructing behind-the-scenes spreadsheets to manage my content and prevent those scattered and digging-a-hole feelings.
   
4. Progress!
   After posting about how I'd gotten a writing job, I heard back from two more places I'd applied. I'm still working through the on-boarding process with the first job, and examining the next steps in the application process for the other two, but I'm hopeful that by the start of February (once they've all gotten back to me again, etc.) I'll have that end of things sorted out and functionally up and running!
   
   The other half of the project, I am delighted to announce, is also finally coming to fruition! 
   
   
   My new site Palimpsest Living is now live!! 
   
   
    Current plan is to post once a week. It's not a lot but, given the new priorities, quality and consistency are FAR more important than quantity. It's also an extremely sustainable posting plan, which is a big deal right now, too.
   
   
5. Going Forward
   
   Crazy as it seems, I'm not quite halfway through this experiment so there's plenty still to come! I expect a bunch of my remaining days will be eaten up by sorting out the new job stuff, but I'm also planning to dedicate time to getting a bunch of drafts written for PL, to prime the pump for the weekly posting schedule. Establishing new habits, tracking systems, etc. to manage the new workload and the chances it makes to how other things run will also play in there somewhere. In the meantime, I'm delighted to have more than I'd expected to show for my experiment at this point and so excited to have PL finally launched!!
   
   As a final note, I am taking 'requests' and suggestions for PL! If there's anything you'd like to see show up on there topic-wise, weird questions or comments you've heard from friends/coworkers, or common misconceptions that drive you nuts, please feel free to send them to me! I'll add them to my 'maybe write about this' list! (I've already got some doozies from work to get me started!!)

Celebrate With Me?

It's not a secret that our long term goal is to leave New York State. (Isn't everyone's, honestly?) Nor have we been anything less than bubbly about our Errant Venturing.

One of the first things that always, always comes to mind when we talk about long term plans and opportunities is how not portable my job is. Although I can usually get days off without too much trouble, I don't have sick time, vacation time, or anything else - all days off are unpaid. Moreover, while I could technically put in for a transfer to a different cafe when we're someday ready to move, there is no guarantee wherever we go next will even have one, let alone have a good one that needs someone in the hours I'd be available to work.

I have plenty of credentials and experience to do other - far more flexible and portable - things. But, as I've been increasingly aware the last few months, the longer I go without some kind of current employent in those fields, the less up-to-date and reliable my skills look to potential employers. To make matters worse, about 95% of what I did in the grant writing field was proprietary, which means I barely have any work that I'm allowed to show potential employers to prove what I can do! 

Anyway, to make a long story short, I set myself up with a two-pronged plan to correct that situation - the sooner the better. (More on the first prong in another post to come soon!) To make good on the second part of the plan, I've been doing the stressful and unpleasant work of job hunting for a while now, trying to find a (very) part-time, fully remote/telecommute writing-related position I can do (in addition to my full-time job) between now and when we eventually leave NY to serve as a bridge between where I am and wherever we go/whatever we do next.

AND I FINALLY GOT HIRED!

Only time will tell if it works out or if I end up going back to the drawing board but, for the moment, I am enormously relieved. It feels SO good to know that I'm not just wishing and dreaming but actually doing something to set us up for success in the areas and plans we hold near to our hearts.