Been thinking about where do I go from here, as far as income-producing activity. Too many options lock me up, although I know too many options is a better place to be than too few.
Those options include:
Build up Pixel Currents, add content and services, get out there and market myself like mad. Pro: I love playing with the WordPress platform and working with other people on their blogging projects. I have experience and a proven track record. I’m proud of what I’ve done so far. Con: Not so great at marketing myself and self-promotion. I’m happy to promote others but still have a hard time pushing myself. Expanding services could help increase client base but could also send me into unfamiliar/uncomfortable territory.
Start a new blog on one of two topics that I’ve got brewing in my head. One is already out there, but on hiatus- I was off to a good start but then got sidetracked. (Just realizing that I stopped writing there right about the time I joined Twitter. Coincidence?)
Look into tying my blog ideas into existing blog networks (if any are interested) rather than try to go it alone.
I’ve never been able to wrap my head around SEO, SEM, & other acronyms that could make me money as a blogger. Would be kinda cool to just write and get a paycheck.
Start a different at home business, with a more local focus.
I have a couple ideas. There are definitely niches to fill around here. But there’s also a social hierarchy thing I’m not sure I want to mess with. ‘Nuf said about that.
Get a Real Job.
I should probably move this to the top of the list. But a Real Job doing what? I’d happily work retail again. I can honestly say I enjoyed it. And it just so happens that the local Apple Store is looking for Mac Specialists! I’d love to help sell Macs to non-typical Mac customers. Grandparents & empty-nesters need Macs! But retail = lousy pay.
I’m sure I’d love and be amazing at lots of jobs. I can even work in a cube (even though when I left my last Real Job just prior to giving birth to son #1 I swore I’d never work in a cubical again.) But how do I get people to look past the 18 year employment gap and see the skills and smarts I can bring to the table? In reality, that’s crazy hard. I really wish I’d studied something a little more business-friendly in school. If I were to go again I’d major in marketing. But at this point, I’m not interested in an education do-over.
So there are some of the paths I can take, out there for the world (at least the small portion of it that reads this blog) to see. It already helps me to see them all laid out like this- in fact maybe I won’t even post this.
Ah, who am I kidding, of course I’ll post it. Feedback (and job offers) welcome!
Today is Blog Action Day. Bloggers around the world are blogging on one topic- the environment.
Rather than just write, I decided to take action!
A bulb is out! Oh noes!
What have we here? Compact fluorescent light bulbs!
Sayith the gov:
If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.
Back in olden times when I was learning video production it was still a Big Deal. Equipment was expensive. And bulky. My college graduation gift was a high-end video camera that was attached to a high-end VCR. Each piece weighed probably 10 pounds. I dreamed of one day buying myself an editing suite similar to the one the school had just purchased for (I believe) around $15,000. Computer effects? Remember the cheesy opening to Saturday Night Live during the mid 1980s? The computers that did that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was the top of the line, we students only hoped to someday have access to effects like that. (It didn’t help that I was going to a school with a new and very underfunded TV production program- we were making it up as we went along, and prior to the new editing suite- and cameras to go with- we were learning on a black and white 3 camera studio setup.)
I had that mindset. Video is complex, you need to dedicate time and resources to doing it properly. And either do it properly or it’s just home movies. I didn’t go into the business, but I never lost that itch to do video. I edited together a few things over the years, but mostly I just sat back and thought “someday…”
But along came the future. Now you just need an inexpensive digital camera and free software. Windows Movie Maker (free with Windows) or Mac iMovie (free with OS X) can do things we couldn’t imagine doing in 1985.
Steve makes it look so easy. And it is! Now you can not only do it all with a couple hundred dollars worth of camera, you can even, as Robert Scoble says, “have a TV station in [your] pocket.” and broadcast live with a service like Kyte or Ustream.
I don’t expect I’ll be a regular videoblogger, but I do plan to put more videos like the one I did the other day out there. Just for fun :).
I realized that some video I thought had been trashed by my camera was fine after all, so I played George Lucas and recut my movie. It’s been a very long time since I did any video editing, so it’s fun playing with it again!
