Posts Tagged ‘goals’

End of the Year, Preliminary Thoughts

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

For the first time since I launched Clockpunk Studios in 2009 ( my web design com­pany that spe­cial­izes in author and pub­lish­ing web­sites) I’m pretty busy at the end of the year.  Normally, busi­ness drops off in December quite harshly as many clients spend time with their own fam­i­lies.  It usu­ally gives me some time to wrap up the year and work on inter­nal schemes, but not now.

This is not me com­plain­ing.  Quite the con­trary. I’m as excited to work on client projects as much now as I was when I started the busi­ness.  But it’s caus­ing me to delay some things, like get­ting back to this blog regularly.

I intend to spend some time in the next cou­ple of weeks redesign­ing this blog a bit, to make it more mobile friendly and cleaner, eas­ier to read.   I also want to go over my per­sonal goals for 2011 and check my suc­cess and talk about the things I failed to do and why.  It helps keep me hon­est about them.  And I’ll also be work­ing on my goals for 2012.

I can’t say that I feel like I’ve changed a lot in 2011, except in the sense that I’ve real­ized I can’t do all the things I want to do in the time I have.  I’ve started to real­ize that my dreams of being a pro­fes­sional writer/​web designer/​photographer are pretty much con­flict­ing with one another, and at best I might man­age two of them, but not three.  But more on that later.

Mostly, 2011 has been like 2010, only bet­ter.  Business has been bet­ter, grow­ing slightly!  My life feels more in bal­ance.  But I do feel a bit tired, com­ing up on the end of it.  I’ve been work­ing hard for the last few months, and I never took a real vaca­tion this year, in the sense of not just trav­el­ing for busi­ness or fam­ily.   I believe I need to make time to travel to recharge my bat­ter­ies, and more impor­tantly, dis­con­nect.   I had this week sched­uled for that, but I’m frankly inun­dated with client email and calls on a daily basis regard­less.  It’s get­ting harder to see how I can sus­tain things the way they are and go on a vaca­tion in the future, espe­cially one where I wouldn’t have web access.

About the clos­est thing I have to a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage is  that I try my damnedest to offer the best sup­port pos­si­ble, respond­ing to emails any time, any­where so long as I’m awake.  But I think this pol­icy may be start­ing to burn me out, to be con­stantly wor­ried about clients need­ing some­thing.  The con­stant iPhone ding­ing and check­ing.  It’s a bit much.  I’m not sure what to do about it yet.  It’ll be some­thing I have to address in the com­ing year.  If any­one has any advice on the sub­ject, I’d love to hear it.

But as far as prob­lems go, it’s a minor one.  My biggest prob­lem is decid­ing what risks to take next.  What ways to stretch myself and grow.  There’s food in the fridge, money in the bank, and the rent is paid.  And as far as I know, I’m not suf­fer­ing from any­thing uniquely ter­mi­nal.  I’m very grate­ful for what I have this year.

I hope your year is wrap­ping up nicely as well, and I hope you’re think­ing ahead to all the great things to come.  Let’s all kick butt in 2012.

2010 Year in Review

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

You knew it was com­ing, although you prob­a­bly didn’t sus­pect I would be so bloody late about it.  In this post, I will break down my suc­cesses, my fail­ures, my hopes, and my regrets, for the pre­vi­ous year, and the year now bar­rel­ing down upon us.  This is going to get long, so here’s a cut to make life eas­ier for ya if you want to skip it.

Continue read­ing ›

Action!

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Action. When it comes to aspi­ra­tions, its not about ideas. It’s about mak­ing ideas hap­pen. What’s your next step?

Writing

I’m writ­ing a novel out­line as we speak.  If my pay­ing work can keep from blow­ing up, I’ll be able to set writ­ing goals weekly to get the novel writ­ten in six months or less.   

Web Design

My busi­ness needs to con­tinue to grow of course, so I’m going to take the dis­taste­ful step of cold-​​emailing peo­ple who might be able to use my ser­vices.  I really hate “sell­ing” but if I’m going to keep things run­ning smoothly, I think I need to get over this and be will­ing to put my ser­vices out there more.  The trick is to not be spammy or a jerk about it.  Suggestions?  Let me know in the comments. 

I am also ded­i­cat­ing a small por­tion of my time each week to exper­i­men­ta­tion and devel­op­ing new tech­niques, as well as read­ing one tech­ni­cal book per month.

Photography

I hope to get at least one trip in in the spring to some place amaz­ing and beau­ti­ful with the express goal of mak­ing beau­ti­ful pho­tos.  It’s hard to take action here with as busy as every­thing else has got­ten this year, but it is impor­tant to me that I con­tinue to grow as a pho­tog­ra­pher even if it’s a low priority.

Writing this had made me real­ize that I’m often long on plans and ideas and short on action. What are your next steps?

The Evolutionary Basis for Creative Depression

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Last week, The Economist ran a really fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on recent research into the evo­lu­tion­ary ben­e­fits of depres­sion.  Why do we get depressed?  Why did such a trait come to be, and if it’s so detri­men­tal to our health, why hasn’t it been selected against in the population?

Dr Nesse’s hypoth­e­sis is that, as pain stops you doing dam­ag­ing phys­i­cal things, so low mood stops you doing dam­ag­ing men­tal ones—in par­tic­u­lar, pur­su­ing unreach­able goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mech­a­nism that iden­ti­fies cer­tain goals as unat­tain­able and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.

Unobtainable or unre­al­is­tic goals?   Like, say, beat­ing the odds and sell­ing a story to the New Yorker?  Or sell­ing a screen­play to Hollywood for 6 fig­ures?  Or how about win­ning a Hugo award before you turn 30?  Could this explain why an unusu­ally high num­ber of artists and cre­ative types suf­fer from depression?

Creativity is often all about unre­al­is­tic goals.  The prob­lem is, with­out them, we would not strive to achieve the things we do finally achieve.  Aim for the stars, shoot for the moon, as they say.  So, depres­sion is tied directly to our ambi­tion and stick-​​to-​​it-​​iveness?  From the article:

Dr Nesse believes that per­sis­tence is a rea­son for the excep­tional level of clin­i­cal depres­sion in America—the coun­try that has the high­est depres­sion rate in the world. “Persistence is part of the American way of life,” he says. “People here are often dri­ven to pur­sue overly ambi­tious goals, which then can lead to depres­sion.” He admits that this is still an unproven hypoth­e­sis, but it is one worth con­sid­er­ing. Depression may turn out to be an inevitable price of liv­ing in a dynamic society.

Depression, an inevitabil­ity of a dynamic soci­ety and a cre­ative lifestyle?  What do you think?  Is it pos­si­ble that those of us who suf­fer so much “cre­ative” anguish would be much hap­pier with our lives if we aimed lower?  But would that just be giv­ing up, and just as bad as being depressed?  Which is worse, a lack of ambi­tion or being depressed?