After deciding that the beginning of the year was my deadline to start releasing content, then plan was to have two weeks written and recorded before the first was released. The completely foreseeable problem with this plan is that starting at the start of the year means writing this content over the Christmas-New Year period, and I don’t get time off of work. If anything work was busier since state and federal government employees don’t work that week and most businesses follow suit with time off.
So I put myself in a position where I needed to write, record, and set up the new website during the busiest time of year and I utterly failed to get that done. I had written 2 of the blogs, none of the flash fiction, and I had recorded nothing other than a sound check with my new microphone. Then New Year’s Eve came rolling around and I decided that deadlines are good for me, so I published the website as is – which is to say poor – and told myself that I had no obligation to advertise the site until I was happy with it. After all, the content regime is simple enough if that is the only thing I’m producing; but I’m writing the website, making a podcast for the first time, navigating copyright laws with music and such.
Basically, I put myself in a position where I worked out what I could do in a week, then decided to do that plus 7 times more work in order to start.
This is hardly a new occurrence. I’m always promising that I’ll get the work finished in an unrealistic time frame.
Still, deadlines are good motivators, so I must buckle down and get the job done. Right now the podcast is sitting in limbo as it is made, but not live, because I have to set up the hosting for it and do a bunch of other one-off work that I won’t have to contend with every week. This is exactly what I expected to happen, and is completely part of the plan, which is why I wanted to have two weeks of content make before the website went live, so that I could always focus my attention on building the site instead of writing content if I had to.
Well, the moral of this story is that the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I’m determined to get everything under control and keep on schedule, so I’ll just have to work harder.
I’ll be tired and cranky, but I’ll see you tomorrow.