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The Year Behind … and Ahead

I’ve reached a curious point in my journey.

When I started this blog a year ago, my intention was to post to it every day. Which I did throughout all of last January. But after only a month of this, I could see it would be too much.

The reasons why have less to do with me not having enough to say as with me not always feeling as if I had something to say worth reading. So for some of those days that month, I wasn’t so much writing as “creating content.” And to be honest, creating content for the sake of it (not even a paycheck) doesn’t make me all that happy.

So after that first month, I scaled things back, and only posted when I could come up with something that I felt was interesting enough to read. Which meant that in February, instead of posting 30 times, I posted 15 times. But I was okay with that. Because it meant I was choosing quality over quantity.

Then March came … and as we all know, the world went kind of sideways.

This threw me off in a few different ways. Emotionally and logistically, of course, I and my family were just as rocked as everybody else was by how much the world suddenly changed.

Likewise, my clients were thrown for a loop. Some needed more and/or different things from me, while others went into survival mode, locking down their marketing budgets. As a business, I began the process of adapting and “hustling” and “pivoting” as well as I could to pay the bills. Sometimes it was enough, and sometimes it wasn’t. But it sure kept me busy.

So busy, in fact, that when I got to the end of March, I saw that I had only posted six times.

Yet even that seemed like a lot compared to April, when I only posted once. The title of the article I wrote that month was “The Sound of an Anvil Dropping,” and in hindsight, that seems appropriate somehow.

Because in May, I posted nothing. No sound at all.

Part of the reason for this was because by then, I had slipped out of writing mode, taking on increasingly more web development gigs and less writing gigs. Because that’s what clients needed and what I had the skills (after 25+ years as a web developer) to deliver for them.

Still, neither I nor the blog was out for the count just yet.

In June, I decided to run a beta for the online workshop (Own the Turn) that I’d been developing while participating in Seth Godin’s Akimbo seminars over the past nine months. Without going into the details of what that workshop is, I can say that the process of doing this — something new — did seem to get my creative juices flowing again.

Because I posted twice in June. And then for the next few months, I posted more or less weekly. It wasn’t nearly as much as January or even February … but it was a comfortable pace that I could live with. I felt good about the articles I was writing, and confident that they were worth reading.

Here are few that seemed to resonate with people …

In the meantime, by this point, my business had balanced out and evolved a bit.

I had started the year focusing almost exclusively on writing and story strategy services. By the end of the year, I was back to doing those things, but in a new context. Now they were the first stages of a suite of story-focused services that also included web development and even video production.

It turned out that at some point during the strange ride that was 2020, I had come to a realization. Which was that it mattered far less to me exactly which kind of work I did than who I did it for. That I got far more energy from helping good people do good things.

So my client list now includes businesses and organizations that are doing things like making music … and exposing financial injustice … and preventing elder abuse … and promoting positive business practices … and advocating for veterans … and helping children learn and laugh in hard times.

Long story short, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly I want this blog to be in 2021.

And one of the things I’d like it to be about is not always me. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed spinning tales about my childhood here. Or discussing what can be learned through the simple act of splitting wood. And I’ll continue to do that when I think there’s something worth saying that might provide others with insight. Or simply entertain.

But there are so many amazing small and solo and freelance business stories out there that can and should be told. Including the stories of some of my clients and peers. Because people need to hear them and know what’s possible. They need to see what it looks like when a business or organization chooses to act with purpose and intent.

So in between everything else this month, I’m working out the best format to do that here. To help people tell those stories.

Please stay tuned …