I went over the list of stuff I did in the week gone and, friends, it’s a good list. Pretty damned good by far.
The thing is this: If you believe the various instructionalities surrounding the process after reviewing said list, I need to use the reviewing of stuff to determine just what to do in the next seven days.
And the scary thing is, there’s a bunch of stuff, a nice ripe Italian vine bunch that I’d love to press under my feet.
But am I mistaking the whole damn vine for just one bunch?
Let’s go over what’s been happening.
Pitching Paid to Play and Recording More Episodes
I’m making slow progress on Three Things, with enough text for another post over on Paid to Play, which is fine for now. The chat with Gav is also lurking in my queue of things to do.
However, I had a brainwave early in the week about a way of getting Paid to Play… well, pay. And that’s to pitch it to a gamer culture web site.
Sure, I’ve chatted with folks from all walks of life, but I’ve particularly enjoyed my chats with folks like Henry Smith, Mur Lafferty, Lukas Litzsinger, Elizabeth Vaughan, Trevor Longino, Jared A. Sorensen, Andrew Navaro and Saffron Bryant – and, let’s not forget, Gavin Dunne.
And it’s those chats and more like them that I think would be particular interest to the sites I have in mind.
I wrote a pitch, reviewed it, asked the marketing gurus at work to review it and sent it off on Friday night, hoping to wind up near the top of the e-mail in-boxes of the site’s US-based admins when they got in on Friday morning.
Of course, this means I’ll need more interviews and soon. I’ve already queued one up with Mick Archer, who owns local game store The Wicked Goblin, for this Thursday evening, and I have a few more potentials to follow up with.
Freelancing on Fiverr and Elsewhere
Here’s some good news: Someone hired me on Fiverr!
Turns out it wasn’t a back cover blurb gig; the hirer needed some content on his website and it turned out I could deliver. So, I’m now up $4.
It was around 200 words more than my original offer was for, but it netted me a positive review. Maybe I need to consider another offering or two?
That also means working on promoting Fiver a bit – which I’m in two minds about. On one hand, it’ll be good practice, but on the other, do I really want to be marketing my Fiverr profile when my aim is to build a solid-paying sideline?
Still, part of me says, remember no matter what to start small…
I still have another article for the career website to scribble up. I have a couple of deadlines, one being tomorrow and another on the fifteenth, that I can have it done by. I think it’s going to be the latter, but given that I’m aiming for a shorter length than the last one, it’s possible I could get it done by tomorrow.
Blogging for Myself
You know, I’ve resisted giving this site any kind of direction, mostly because I already have a focused site in Paid to Play with a grokkable topic that I can build things like editorial calendars around.
But here’s something I put up on Facebook earlier today:
You know, I can blog about goal-setting, I can blog about freelancing, I can blog about fear. Yet whenever I check my stats, THIS is the page that people keep coming to:
Three Tips to Help Your First Android Netrunner Game Stay Fun
Has me thinking about dropping into The Wicked Goblin with my starter box more often. There’d be an angle for an article series: going up against expanded decks with decks from just from the starter box…
And I can already see designing a graphic for the post series (which is apparently a handy tool for marketing your blog on Pinterest) and keeping it focused on enjoying Netrunner without splurging on the expansions…
Are All These Tasty Ingredients Too Much In One Burger?
So let’s just list the things I’m trying to cram into my spare time this week:
- Contacting possible guests for Paid to Play.
- Recording an interview with Mick.
- Playing Android: Netrunner at The Wicked Goblin.
- Re-writing my Paid to Play pitch for another website on my prospects list.
- Writing more of Three Things.
- Getting the next comic strip ready to post on Monday.
- Writing the next article for the career web site.
If so, the logical answer is to drop (or at least defer) some of these until I have more time,e specailly as I have toher things to do – like spend time with my wife, do homework, mow the lawn and work at the nine-to-five.
And yet… I don’t really want to drop any of them!
Is there a solution?
Well, maybe it’s to not plan beyond the required scheduling, like the interview with Mick. – just do the essentials, then what I feel like doing whenever I find myself with spare time. What gets done gets done, and what doesn’t, doesn’t.
It seems the way that involves the least stress…
What are you doing?
When did you realise you may have over-loaded yourself?
how did you decide what to keep and what to set aside – or how did you get it all done anyway?
Featured image: “The Super Scooby from Jolly Fryer in Filton, Bristol” by Paul Townsend. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.