The Prodigal Third Post

I'm an awful procrastinator. My entire life/career, I have habitually put off things that were most important and urgent for things that were fun or cool. Even when these things were very challenging and/or didn't pay dick. Also, my idea of "fun" and "cool" are likely not congruous with most. I.e. an MLB spreadsheet for my potential fake baseball team or designing a t-shirt for a non-existent seafood chain restaurant in a very nonexistent D&D-iverse.

Don't be too alarmed – I come thru on most deadlines, but still routinely put off things arbitrarily. I spent almost a decade in a culture of basically never being late on clients' projects – pretty much torture. Now that I'm flying solo, things like fixing my website, SEO, posting regularly here, putting up something cool on Instagram each day to generate some Likes and self-worth, drawing that picture of my great aunt that was commissioned (6) months ago, et cetera, get shoved further and further back in the recesses of my mind and to-do list.

And of course, almost a parody of myself, I have a sizable amount of click-bait productivity articles on managing procrastination saved in my Reading List folder below my URL window or in my Pocket.

Taking the :10 to haphazardly slap this on the web is a nice step, and you know what they say about knowing …

Testing 1-2, testing …

This site and portfolio are very recent ventures of mine, clearly. Apologies for the constant WIP nature. I'll get there eventually.

Any quiet time is spent looking and re-looking at the content I am posting, trying to make certain it is my best available work and shows versatility and range. I'm also teaching myself as many methods as possible to create content that can showcase my work. Attempting videos, animations, and various editing effects to keep interest without the vessel detracting from its conveyance.

I am all but totally self-taught. I've gleaned things from peers and mentors, and did attend a 1-day seminar many years ago. Aside from these caveats, anything I can do is from figuring out before or after giant mistakes how to do so. These mistakes have cost me hundreds of hours and provided priceless tutelage. Fail fast and fail forward.

I've utilized "Still working on that first Swoosh" as a mantra for many years. I'll explain where that came from and what it means in a future post. Spoiler alert.

But I think "Shortening the Curve" might supplant that. It's amorphous, but poignant. I'm trying to shorten the learning curve in my personal and professional life, always. I can sell my knowledge and experience in sales, marketing, design, branding, publishing, et al to offer the same education to clients. They can go from knowing very little about the industry I am unequivocally dedicated to (and appearing so) to talking and looking like savvy experts. If you educate, you don't need to sell. This goes hand-in-hand with something I learned from Dr. Ballard very recently: Know. Like. Trust.

Enjoy your day.

-A