I’m fed up with allowing myself to be lured into conversations. They distract me from my goals. It’s far too easy to just idly chat and get nothing done. There’s a time for talk but there’s also time for shutting up and getting to work. I’m coming to realise that this is crucial for people in the creative professions, because their minds are chronically prone to drifting.
I want to write more, yet I also want to get out and socialise more. Those goals don’t agree with each other. I suppose what I mean is that I want to perform some kind of work and then be known for it, so people will talk to me about it. I thought computer programming was that kind of job as a kid because I saw a box for a software program once. It had a picture on the cover of the actual engineer who made it, so I naively assumed that writing software was a bit like writing a book, in more ways than one.
In reality, as an engineer, you’re a figure who rarely if ever gets any recognition for your work. In fact, most frequently, what people do is they complain about it. Getting compliments from users is exceedingly rare. It’s all the hard work of writing a book, with none of the recognition.
There is a major difference between wanting to be compensated for your work and wanting to be recognised for it. Money isn’t recognition. Money is compensation. Recognition has no price tag. It’s actually more valuable than money, because being recognised opens all sorts of doors for a person. Recognition is why some people in the computer industry are headhunted. Again, it is a far more valuable asset than money. I’m willing to work for little or no money for quite a long time in order to receive some kind of recognition.
This week, I was distracted from my blogging and YouTube work for the first time. An opportunity to work as a freelance journalist for a small newspaper turned up, but it turned out to be a dead end. I proposed to them that I could cover an area of interest for them in my local region. It turned out, however, that my region wasn’t a hot spot for their area of interest. There was very little for me to actually cover.
I was distracted a second time when a friend of mine expressed interest in doing photojournalism with me — an exciting prospect in many ways. We talked about it for several days, but it eventually became apparent that he didn’t have the time for it until spring, and only if his missus approved of it.
All in all, I spent the entire week trying to make these two projects happen. I fell into the very trap I told myself I would not fall into: Jumping at a seemingly better opportunity the moment I spotted one. I was able to falsely justify this detour because it was writing-related.
Two new rules will be added to my working regime, which I will resume in the coming week:
I can’t drop this blog, nor the YouTube channel. I must be doing those specific things, and all other things will have to come in addition to them.
The hours before lunch are for writing only. I won’t be available to anyone else until then.