Far too long ago I wrote about setting some goals for my writing career. As we’re all sick of hearing by now, the year 2006 has been discouraging so far. I thought I’d take a fresh look at my goals. Not with the intent of changing them; rather, I’d like to evaluate my progress. If I can correlate small, daily activities with my long-term plans, I’m getting somewhere. If not, I’m misspending my time. So let’s see if I can haul my writing career out of the ditch.

What I’ve Done Right

• Continued work on the AskSpace newsletter, even though momentum on that project is dropping off. I’m not getting paid for it, but I’ve gained a ton of experience writing and editing, and worked with some talented and helpful people.
• Oneword has been a great way to force myself to write something on an almost-regular basis. It’s been my gateway drug; once I’ve spent a minute on it, I’m not quite ready to stop.
• Drafted a writing-centric resume, which I’ll post before long.
• Applied for a couple of left-field writing jobs, which I’ve heard nothing back from. Oh well.
• Signed up for a hosting account, so I can do some open-source web development. Expect this site to move over there eventually.
• Registered a domain to do some independent copy consulting. More on that later.
• Studied Rails (a rapid web development platform — all the cool kids are doing it).

What I’ve Done Wrong

• I took on a side programming project. This seemed a good idea at the time, despite some warning signs: the rate was low (as a favor to a friend); the project was sub-sub-contracted (bureaucratic nightmare); and the platform was ASP.NET (which I swore I would Never Use Again). Once I started on it, “you can work on this at home in the evenings” became “you’ll be working on this every evening, all weekend, and sneaking time on it at work”, which is why I haven’t been posting much. I’m still open to doing side programming projects — the right ones — but in retrospect, this project hasn’t advanced any of my goals. It’s not going to be a gateway to anything I really want to do, and it’s not lucrative enough to free me from my day job.
• I basically quit blogging for six weeks because of the above. If I opened up my PowerBook at home, the little voice said, “Shouldn’t you be working on that web project?”
• I let my Squidoo lens get stale. Once upon a time, it was ranked in the mid 100s. At last report it was down around 2600.
• I haven’t hunted for other opportunities as much as I should. A few emails to local businesses with lousy web copy could have resulted in some easy profit.

What I’ve Learned

I still really want this. It may not show as much, but the passion is still there. Studying Ruby and Rails has caught my interest, and boosted my interest in programming a little — but when I’m not writing, I feel guilty. It’s not a phase after all.

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