After a two-week, unplanned hiatus, I’m back to blogging and more with Real Joe.
Where’ve I been? The intense pace of my day job is part of the explanation. I’ve been moderating two public policy forums simultaneously for nearly three weeks, plus doing several other web-based projects for clients. But that only partially explains it, as I’ve also had plenty of freetime where I could’ve been blogging. Some of that was just due to my unwillingness to give up other stuff in my life to take time for Joe… family stuff, racquetball, and those all-important naps.
But as I reflect on it today, (and as I read my journal notes from the past two weeks — yes, I do write stuff in a journal that I don’t post here) it seems that it was not a crisis of commitment and passion to Real Joe as I originally assumed. Rather, it seems — and I emphasize ‘seems’ as I can’t be sure about this stuff — that what was tripping me up was a lack of self-discipline and daily/weekly structure that many self-employed people have trouble with. I’ve always had this problem, of course, but my busyness with my other work just brought it to the forefront.
So I need a tighter daily schedule. I need someone to report my goals and progress to each week. I don’t need someone telling me what to do, but someone regularly giving me feedback on my plans and performance, someone to be accountable to. I’m not sure yet who this person is going to be but I’ve got some prospects to ask. In the meantime, I’ll act as if. So today I’ll do some preparation… clean and organize my office, clean out my email inbox, prepare a draft of my goals for the week, set my schedule based on my priorities for Monday. And then execute. How hard can it be?
Damn hard. I’d better post this quick before I start waffling.