Dateline 1-14-2016

I think I'm finally realizing that my life is my career.

Yesterday was a long tedious day for me. I woke up, worked my "day job" then started to go to work on the blog. Since I use a web building service to create the content for The Wicker Breaker, I don't have anything that I've created saved locally on my computer.

I could and probably should write up what I want to say in Word, save the files, and consider the site backed up, but it is so much easier to write directly to the page. Though I am learning to build sites from scratch, I don't plan on creating a non-drag and drop version of The Wicker Breaker any time soon. Since I don't plan on leaving SquareSpace I sort of feel safe keeping all my work on their server.

My only concern is, what if something horrible happens on their end?

This happened to me with a writing service that I used where I would write a short story a day for an entire year. They apparently called it quits and I lost all those stories and it doesn't look like I'm going to get them back.

This led me to rethink my outlook on backing up The Wicker Breaker.

The easiest way for me to do this is to go from page to page and cut and paste all the content into Word documents. I'm sure there's probably a better/easier way but this way works for me.

If you've been following this site at all then you know that I create a lot of content. Thanks to 365 Days of Resolution, I literally created multiple pages a day for at least 730 days, so that's a lot of pages to go through.

I spent over 10 hours yesterday copying and pasting the contents of The Daily Breaker link. It was so boring, tedious, monotonous, time consuming and inspiring. As I mindlessly clicked and hit shortcut keys I started to think, "This is like a job."

That's when I realized, "This IS my job."

I usually think of this blog, my writing, the courses I'm taking and anything else that I do that doesn't directly result in an income as being nothing more than a hobby. When I think about what I do from the eyes of an outsider I feel I'm doing nothing more than avoiding the real world playing around in a make believe world where my hobbies are a fun way to fill time. I never think of the actual "work" that goes into what I do.

With yesterday being an, "all work and no play," sort of day doing nothing more than behind the scenes work that no one will ever see or appreciate are started to see more to what I am doing than just playing around.

Along with backing up this site I'm also writing up my strategy. Up until now, I preferred to keep all my planning in my head. I used to feel this led to me being more flexible and able to change directions on a whim but now I'm beginning to seek structure.

The picture of my plan has always been clear in my head but as I write my goals and strategies all the ambitious ideas that I have seem more achievable and less like a fantasy. I've also found that writing down my strategy highlights to me just how much I've already accomplished toward achieving these goals.

I've been saying for the past year that I feel like I'm heading in the right direction. Now I know that my bearings are accurate it's time to create this elusive "right path" that I've been seeking my entire life.

Hopefully this one leads me in the right direction.