Free Lunch (and dinner and airfare and lodging and...)

Work less, make more money. Yeahright...   

Yeah. Right. This could actually work.   

My biz partner and I were recently talking about the new tactic we're starting to plan that would, in fact, make us more money for less work when I pointed out that we have already long since been doing most of the things we will need to do for this new approach. "We just didn't know it," I summed up.

Exactly. Both professionally and personally this year, I've realized that I've long since been doing one or two things that I need to do to move on to the next, more productive phases of my life in both of those realms -- the private and the professional. It's just a matter of applying those practices into different contexts with different deliberate intent. In other words, I'm just using what I already know to better results. No reinvention necessary.   

Of course, the irritating part here is wondering what it is I already know and could be really useful that I'm not seeing for what it could be. What am I missing now? Hmmm... This can bother me a lot more than the potential value I've missed in the past by not figuring out these things sooner (Ah, hell, what can you do... but your best?) Right under my nose. Maybe it is my nose. Like that.

These are the sorts of puzzles that make me never regret that my thinking is just normally tangential. If I didn't jump tracks and make wild, seemingly disparate connections as readily as breathing, I would be considerably more stuck and frustrated and "behind" (whatever the heck I ever mean by that). Sometimes, that sort of thinking makes me see a natural progression, even if it's coming along multiple threads. In solo theatre production implementation, I've a pretty good grip on where my skills are now and it's instructive on this note about existing skills yet unrealized. So, how about other things I want to do? Sound for picture, for example? Sometimes I wonder if I'm underestimating myself. Sometimes, it turns out that I am. A lot of years of a lot of variety of experience ought to add up to solid practical skills. I just need to make the connections in my mind... again.

Sometimes, though, the key is the have a little outside help, even just a little inspiration and an opportunity. For that, you have to get yer ass out of the house and keep it out there, making connections in the world. You never know who's going to help you, sometimes inadvertantly, see what you already have and what you're already capable of doing.

Oops, there I go pontificating again. The point of this installment is that, by applying what we've already been doing, for a few years now, in a slightly different way, my biz partner and I will probably get that airfare, hotel, lunch and dinner covered -- and then some -- without busting our asses like we've been doing with our default procedures. Work less for more? Yep, by just reconfiguring what we normally do just a little bit. I've always thought that "working smart" rather than working hard made sense.  For me, it usually makes better money, affords me more time  and energy apart from biz so I can... make a really good dinner for somebody.

P.S., HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KIM -- !

Movement

One of the ways anything works in the effort to accomplish new things is to just move around. Take something and move it, preferably something like forward, but pretty much any movement in any direction is productive. The illusion of movement is stirring stagnant old crap, and it's an easy mistake to make, a nasty habit to have. Pushing things out of place, picking up new things and fiddling with them seemingly without any aim is a good start. I know this, even though it often feels like inefficient use of life, particularly when I'm feeling the impatience to create new worlds with clarity.  

This evening, I was poking around at some things, tentatively and clumsily, but, hell, I learned a couple of things and I got a little creative gratification out of it. Baby steps, maybe, into that new professional direction I've been mulling over so much since this last spring. Part of this pushing movement into new areas is having the energy to wander around when there is neither the compulsive inspiration or the driven discipline to work on something specific. What with scads of other, rather involving things taking up a lot of my energies and hours over the summer -- some of it plenty stressful -- it's been hard to get my head into an open and floating space for this sort of poking around. Been trying to coax it, need it, seemed to get there a bit tonight. It can be a sort of meditative zone in which I've managed to dive in and away from everything else. I come up out of sessions like this thinking, "Uh, wait.. what day is this?..." A good sign, often.

Sound for picture? Looks like a long damn road from here but I kind of like it right now. The more I put it off, tho', the longer it gets. Mize well start walking now. It's movement.

My point is -- ?

As with so many things in my life, this blogthing is under review from the get-go. If it doesn't work for me, it's gone. Heck, I don't even know yet why I have it. Felt like it, it was a whim, a couple of months or so then didn't touch it until recently. Tentative.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to learn how to use Dreamweaver for the "real" website I'm long overdue in producing. So far, I'm not impressed with the thing. Seems to write stupid code like every other page builder I've used, and it hardly seems to be "wysiwyg". Of course, i could be failing to use it properly and take advantage of the best tools. Maybe. I've got someone I can ask when there's a good time for it.

Tentative. Actually, there are fewer tentative things in my life than, say, a year ago. I could use a few more solid ones, particularly in the professional side. The personal side is radically different and better than a year ago, or even six months ago. I had set out about a year ago to completely overhaul my personal life as never before and I did just that. I ought to be able to do that with my professional life.

Somehow, more fiddling around with the web seems to be a smart part of that effort but I've known for almost fifteen years what a terrible time suck even the simplest project can be. That's one reason I've been procrastinating re-educating myself and relaunching webpages. The template model, so common and yet... so what?... doesn't much suit me. Never has. That includes this page. But, hell, I'm here for now... for... what, I'm not at all clear yet.

On the other hand, just stepping forward and poking at things is motion that changes the environment, exercises mental muscles. I hardly knew what the hell I was doing last year attending various social functions beyond moving things but... it certainly led to good places.

I need to do different professional work, making use of what I've already been doing. I need to reconfigure and redirect. No sense in tossing out a bunch of things and starting from scratch.

Come to think of it, I didn't toss out anything in the personal overhaul. I actually just made more use of what I already had.

Hmmm....

TEST

Blah blah fucking blah.
Almost have this thing nailed to how I like it, after having beat up on the CSS code a bunch. Still can't find this light grey background, however. I'd love to get rid of it...