List making is not one of my strengths. My schedule today did not allow me to produce the list I'd hoped to work on. Instead I'll use today's post to describe what I do for a living.
In my day job, I work in IT. That's it really. Of course it's more complicated than that, but none of that is particularly interesting to me, so I can't imagine it will be interesting to anyone else.
I work for a non-profit. That could be interesting, but in this case, no. Unless you are in a very narrow niche of Higher Education, the non-profit that employs me will be about as interesting as the list of tasks I perform as Director of IT.
I write reviews for the local newspaper. Now there's something interesting. Unfortunately that is the kind of work I would love to do more of. Maybe get better and make a living at. As it is, it's a side gig. I earn some spending money, but not enough to do more than pay for gas most months. And it isn't terribly efficient from a time perspective.
I'm not a very fast typist. I write at 750 words daily. When I'm rolling and the only limit of my speed is how fast my fingers can move over the keyboard, I can get to 750 words in about 14 minutes. That's about 53 wpm. A review is usually about that word count. I should be able to crank one out in about 20 minutes, given I need to look up actor's names or histories or whatever. Add in that a movie or play may take about three hours out of my day and that's a lot of time to spend for a few bucks and a free movie ticket. More than that, it often takes me more than an hour to finish writing because I'm pretty hard on myself.
There are a couple other projects out there I'm working on, but have yet to bear any monetary fruit. One is a blog I run and host for a friend of mine. I spend a few minutes on it a month right now, and haven't tried to monetize it yet, much to both of our disappointment. The other is a literary magazine. It's in such bad shape I'm embarrassed about it. Of my four 'jobs' it's the bottom of the totem pole, and gets little time or respect from me.
That's something I hope to fix. I've made a couple of commitments to others. I want to resolve those commitments so that there isn't any guilt attached to working on my own projects. Part of that resolution comes from the accountability I'm hoping to gain from this blog. As I weave in words the mess of projects and responsibilities I have and work to prioritize them, I hope that making the process visible will make me more efficient.
A side effect will be improving my writing for comprehension. My sentences are too long and complicated for modern audiences. I want to work on communicating more efficiently while I'm trying to make other aspects of my life more efficient and productive.
So I'm not seizing the time it takes to write these posts from my other projects. This is a genuine attempt to get better at what everything I do. I hope the time I spend here gives a good return on the investment.
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