(last edited on January 9, 2021 at 9:42 pm)
The past month has been devoted toward getting our interactive project polished for the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. We’ll be doing final tweaks to the interaction and presentation for the remainder of this week, and then we’re done. Done! After that, I can start to think about what comes next for me.
I couldn’t remember what my actual Groundhog Day Resolution (GHDR) was, and it turns out that I didn’t really define it succinctly this year. The GHDR-related posts of this year have been pained attempts to maintain some semblence of momentum in the face of another project that consumed the bulk of my mental energy. Today, I’m content to just say that I want to write about what catches my eye and create that which illuminates, and through these activities establish financial independence by selling products that tickle my fancy. This may not be the fast track to wealth, but it’s the way I would like to do it.
I took some significant steps last month by hiring a personal assistant to handle some of the groundwork in finding a local printer and establishing an Amazon fulfillment account so I can do another run of Emergent Task Planner Pads to have them available all the time, and from there expand into other types of pre-printed products. My reasoning is that with a persistent, easy-to-fulfill presence on the Internet, I’ll be able to create a small marketplace for useful forms and productivity planning products. The whole idea tickles me, like having a lemonade stand on the Internet.
Another component of the plan is to make myself available to more people, because this is ultimately what leads to satisfying project work. As interesting as the museum project was, our team was spread between two coasts and the lack of face-to-face time almost killed me. I hadn’t realized this was such an important aspect of my working life, but apparently it is more critical to me than ever before. Therefore, I’ll be actively seeking collaborators and co-schemers in the Southern New Hampshire / Greater Boston Area to see what kind of daily face-to-face time I can guarantee in my workday. This means that I’m going to be building the organization itself and actively nurturing its culture around familiar themes:
- surround myself with positive-minded, self-empowered, conscientious and kind people who are obsessive about excellence.
- make and show what we mean
As I move into May, my time for new projects will start to open up, and I’ll be taking on new work. I’ve already gotten a couple of nibbles for interesting projects, but I need to ensure that I am not starving my ultimate goals.
For now, however, I’m completely soaked in finishing up the current project. After that, I need to re-enter the world that I’ve shut myself out of for the past six months: blogging, social media, collaboration, and discovering sources of personal inspiration. There are dozens of people to email and chat with with hundreds of threads to follow. Simultaneously, I’ll make an attempt to rebrand strongly around my core values and funnest competencies; I feel it’s gotten way too serious around here lately. I’m thinking there needs to be more pictures of cats, sandwiches, and odd objects found in between the machinery of culture.
Yeah.
6 Comments
Those are some great goals. I started acting on my core values around December. I’ve consistently lived them out since January. Financial independence has not come yet. The opposite has happened. I’m out of a job, but I’m happy!
The “obsessive about excellence” cost me a job today. Some people did not want to pay for excellence.
You are right on about this not being the fast track. It is comforting to know their are other people out their that don’t care about making a quick buck. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Dave,
I think some co-working is for you. A place where you can be independent but not alone – there’s bound to be a co-working space somewhere near you…
http://coworking.pbwiki.com/CoworkingBoston
I’m curious about what you’re going to do for rebranding, and I’m looking forward to some more personal blogging (pictures of odd objects being a favourite of mine).
I like this line a lot:
“surround myself with positive-minded, self-empowered, conscientious and kind people who are obsessive about excellence.”
This is something I need to do more of myself. The only problem is that at times it seems hard to find people like that!
Stuart: Solidarity, bro! The “obsession about excellence” line is a slippery one to hold, and it probably deserves to have its own post. The two scenarios that come to mind are “mismatch of expectations in excellence” and “mismatch of value perception”. It just occurred to me that this doesn’t necessarily have to be slow, either, if one can solve the mismatch issues. It’s essentially what a good integrated product development-marketing campaign would do, applied to our own peculiar brand of excellence.
Cameron: Yah, I’m definitely moving toward coworking. There’s some local stuff happening near where I live which may come to fruition. We shall see! I’m intrigued by the hackerspace concept too…doing something like that for digital media might be fun.
Jeff: I’m curious too. The approach I am going to try can be summed up as “creating deep pattern recognition”.
Denise: Yes, it’s daunting, particularly if you’re seeing the same people year in and year out. Two things I tell myself is that while those incredible people are rare, you really only need ONE of them to start. Then, you just need to be that way, and have some means of communicating that you love excellence. Using props that can convey that can help break the ice.
The part that made me want to reply, was about your wanting to “surround myself with positive-minded, self-empowered, conscientious and kind people who are obsessive about excellence.” I loved it. I am surrounded by people like this. We are a work from home community who promote self Development and Personal Excellence. Apart from making more money than I have ever made in my life before, my love of doing what I do, comes from the wonderful people I am working with. It has really made my life worth living. Love & positivity is truly what makes the world go around.