It’s almost September: school supplies, fall clothes, old friends, class schedules. I love the motion after summer’s pause. I love the thrill of new projects and the renewed energy for old ones. I love the return to making work seriously fun instead of taking vacations that are seriously fun.
In celebration, I bought a notebook today. It has sections of different-colored pages: one for to dos, one for blog post ideas, one for project listings and plans, and one for my someday-maybes.
My fall “class schedule” is starting to take shape:
- Working with Oracle Applications on a variety of “Enterprise 2.0″ (social web for big businesses) consulting projects.
- Preparing book manuscript for print, as the draft will be done by September 1st.
- Writing at least twice a week for Web Worker Daily and occasionally contributing software perspectives to GigaOM.
- Growing a food blog called The Everyday Cafe where I can experiment with niche blogging and alternate income streams like advertising and affiliate earnings while writing about one of my favorite subjects: cooking and eating.
- More non-niche blogging here on eclectic topics ranging from mindfulness to writing to enterprise software to social networks.
- Settling my three kids in their schools. My oldest is off to middle school, so I’ll do what I can to make that transition go smoothly, while my two younger ones return to their same teachers from last year in multi-age Montessori classrooms.
- Taking a weekly date with my husband now that we’ve invested in full-time live-in child care and gotten our au pair up to speed on everything about our household.
- Cleaning and caring for my fall garden, so I have an amazing spring and summer garden again next year. More daffodils, more tulips, and definitely, more lilies.
- Getting back to nonwriting, non tech work. I’m going to start meditating again, practice drawing and painting on a regular basis, and connect more regularly with people outside of the pure technology realm.
And of course I have a not to do list:
I’m not attending or speaking without pay at conferences as the projects above more than saturate my time and energy as they reward and satisfy me. If I travel or speak or both, it will be for paying work. I’m not turning down a chance to hang out with my kids or work on my garden or write on various blogs in exchange for talking to a bunch of (mostly male) techie types who can just as well read my ideas on a blog… or hear the same ideas from some other speaker.
I’m not building my personal brand, except incidentally. What you see on this blog is what you get; I’ve got plenty of opportunity to do cool stuff that doesn’t require me to turn myself into a tube of tropical mint with whitening action! toothpaste. I don’t see Calacanis or Winer or Scoble engaging in personal branding… they just act as themselves online. Or, to take a totally different example, consider Gina Trapani. I don’t see her engaging in any personal branding activity. She just does her awesome stuff at Lifehacker, and you gotta’ believe that she really is that geeky and smart or she couldn’t maintain such consistency over time.
Isn’t that the point of the social web? That we can be ourselves? That we don’t have to come on as consumers or audience or … products?
I’m not worrying about whether I’m building my career in the way I “should” because building it in the way I enjoy seems to be working just fine. My desultory blogging of the last three years, my connecting with people just because I like them, my non-niche blogging and my sometimes irresponsible approach to my supposed responsibilities has inspired me, motivated me, and connected me in ways I never experienced or imagined before the web.
What is your “class schedule” and your “not to do” list for this fall?
2 Comments
Thank you for this post. I really loved the “Isn’t that the point of the social web? …” part. We’re in the middle of rolling out a social networking tool behind the firewall, and suggested labels for the “about me” fields are “About My Work” and “The Real Me” and I chafe at the thought that these are supposed to be different. I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do about that, I may just put the same info in twice.
My “class schedule” includes:
Reading more books: both good stories from the giant stack of unread already in the house, and a few new because I love bookstores and buying books
Going to Defrag: first conference I will be at but not speaking/presenting in a few years, and I’m looking forward to being a sponge and active participant without being “on” in that way. (Thank you day job for paying my way.)
Continuing with creative commitments: I’m 200+ days into the 365 days photo project, and I am determined to finish. There is more I want to do creatively and with my photography, and I don’t want to lose sight of how important it is to make the time for it.
Things I don’t want to do:
- Get bogged down in defensive and scarcity-based thinking
- Worry about my career and “what’s next” and where I “should” be
Inspirational as ever, Anne. Nicely done.
Is it just me, or is our generation/the web worker culture “post-ambition?” Not to say that we don’t have ambition. More a matter that those ambitions reflect broader, less traditional paths. I’d love to hear what you think.