Back during blogging’s glory days between about 2004 and 2011, people new to the medium used to ask me what it took to write a successful blog.
I told them “stick to a schedule”. Didn’t matter if it was two pieces a day, or once a week, or twice a month – but pick a schedule and stick to it.
And I’ve largely done that for the past 23 years.
But you might have noticed – output’s been a little light this past few months.
Part of it has been priorities. I got laid off from my day job in February. Which, given that I approach job-hunting with maniacal intensity, meant rather less time for writing than normal; when I’m on the beach, I start grinding out resumes pretty much as soon as I have my coffee.
And then, as I noted last March, I fortuitously wound up getting picked up at HotAir.com, writing with my old friends Ed Morrissey and David Strom. I get paid for what I write there. Not a ton, and certainly not enough to pay my bills – and it’s a slightly different kind of blogging than what I do here. But it’s a nice side hustle.
To go with my other side hustles – the NARN and my band.
Which made for a spring and summer of cranking out stuff for Hot Air, band gigs, and above all cranking out resumes. 416 of them in 19 weeks.
Given a choice between feast and famine, I’ll take the feast. I landed a day job about a month back. A contracting job, limited to 40 hours a week. The bills are paid and then some.
And then I connected with a startup which eats up a chunk of my spare time during evenings and weekends.
So, commitment-wise I’ve been trying to stretch two pounds of sausage casing to cover five pounds of sausage.
Oh, yeah – and I’m coming down with a summer cold.
Shot in the Dark isn’t going anywhere. That habit I told everyone to develop back in the first paragraph still barks at me every morning at 5AM, just as it did int 2003. It’s been a constant thing for me for what feels like a lifetime. It’s also my show prep – and God and Salem willing, the NARN isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We’ve got a country to save.
Anyway – output’s not going to stay down. And I’ve got a project or two that might just rear their heads in the near future, after I’ve gotten over the whole “going from unemployed to overemployed” thing.
But pardon a brief slowdown while I take some zinc and maybe try to get six hours of sleep tonight.
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