fog of eternity

A blogger starts writing because of a desire to make money or through enjoyment and interest in the subject. But most of us share a limitation, we're not independently wealthy. Unless we get great success and thousands upon thousands of visitors on a regular basis, we're never going to make a living by blogging.

For me, like many others, blogging is a professionally focused hobby. I might develop long term benefit through work opportunities, but I'm not monetising the blog. I work in a salaried role as well, and so Fog of Eternity is just one of a number of hobbies vying for my "free time".

I talked a little while ago about time management, but I thought I'd give a general idea of the kind of plate spinning that goes on. Even for those with good time management skills (and I don't claim to be one) it's a struggle. For us "part timers" blogging is a extensive commitment to an already busy life. Here's an example from the last week for me.

We need to pay the bills

I work full time for a non-IT company doing web design and development. It's a reasonably large company, but the web and online team is two people. I think we're pretty innovative in our approaches relative to the rest of our industry. But a two person team can find themselves under a lot of time pressure.

The last week saw my time taken up by three main tasks, and was a pretty heavy week in terms of late hours:

• the development of a blog/online discussion portal for one client
• sketching out several microsites at short notice
• drawing up of email templates for promotional mail-outs

Clients often make late changes to job specs based on new information or preferences, and there are deadline pressures for microsites to be live before press advertising. As a result I'm lucky if I have a week when I can work a "standard" 9-5. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy working for the company, but the hours can be variable given the nature of my role.

Personal projects

I finally got round last week to putting together a pet project I'd been thinking of for a while. You can see the results at www.myfriendsdontknow.com. It's a bit of fun and an interesting design exercise. But it's also something that I hope might develop into something quite popular over time (even if I did mess up the StumbleUpon submission so that it got tagged as an adult site, something I apparently can't reverse!).

Putting the site together from scratch, based only on the sketches and ideas I'd jotted down, took time. Ironing out the styling glitches for cross browser took quite a while longer. It's not in "final format", but it's up and running. Even when running it still requires a time commitment, to moderate and post the "confessions" that are central to the premise.

Family life

I think my family life takes up less time than others. In this I am not lucky. I've been married for a few months but my wife and I are seperated by the Atlantic Ocean, her in the US and me in the UK. In the long term I'll emigrate, something I'm hugely excited about. In the short term it means a regularly scheduled 1-2 hour phone call a night. It's one of the best parts of my day, but still a time commitment.

All work and no play

It's important to make time for pure relaxation, time just for ourselves. For those of us with families that's the biggest and best part of non-tech time. We may be tech geeks but we have friends we want to see! I have a couple of hours a day I can spend cementing my geek reputation with my volunteer position in The Camarilla live roleplay society. There's Grand Theft Auto IV!

Sometimes it's OK if the plates drop

The last week for me was pretty busy. One of the things that fell by the wayside was posting here. I felt bad about it. But I shouldn't really - I know I'm going to come back to it. I'm sure most of my readers have similar stories of similar weeks. And in those weeks it can be difficult to keep, and things get missed or left out.

Chill out when there's a day, or even a week, when you can't get everything finished.  Guilt can be a terrible demotivator, even if it's guilt over something trivial. Avoid that guilt, realise you're a human being. Then, when the time frees up again, you can come back to those things you missed with a renewed sense of vigor and purpose.