Don’t overlook that posting links to stories that make the poster “sick” provides the poster with the opportunity to demonstrate publicly what a good person they are. I am guilty of this myself, of course, sometimes. (But not nearly as often as before I realized this.) It is a usually-unrecognized motive for the activity. So many people are unaware of why they do things — well, I’ll own up to my own humanity — most of what I do, I have no idea why. It’s the process of trying to figure that out that is important I think, because with the effort comes some humility, and maybe less impulse toward criticism of others, and even vengeance-seeking. Maybe a little more room for compassion is made in one’s heart.

I think my strategy for the next year is going to be to simply say no more often and try to keep like twenty percent of my hours free for the non-client work stuff that always gets put off.

Juggling two or more actual professions is tough, I’m having trouble trying to find time to do more art and writing just as a hobby even. Maybe if you decoupled one of those from your career goals and made it a goal to take a vacation and take more photos while you’re out you’d have more success.