Punditry is a full-time job if you really want to do it right. That’s just one of the life lessons 2009 dealt me.
After I got fired from my job as a construction I.T. manager some years ago, I got a publishing contract with O’Reilly, who published two of my books. This catapulted me into a position I’d never been before: that of a pundit. Suddenly, my opinion mattered. It was something I ran with, and for some time, did so profitably. But it is indeed very difficult to stay ahead of the curve and remain a relavent pundit, especially when you have other concerns–like growing a quote-unquote real business.
That’s not to say I don’t keep up on the musings of thought leader like Andy Abramson, Alec Saunders, Rich Tehrani, Jeff Pulver, Ken Camp, Luca Filigheddu, Dameon Welch-Abernathy, and a slew of other thought leaders who are apparently much better at time management than am I.
Just get me away from my laptop screen, you know? I mean I love sharing my opinion–that is, I really do like being a pundit–but can I please have a little me time at the end of the workday? During the first half of the year, writing on subjects about which I care increasingly less (VoIP, for example) subsided because I just had to get something off my plate.
Jacob and Madelyn are in junior high school now, too. I do so much more with them than I used to. They’re both great musicians and as they grow older, our mutual interests have widened. We spend a lot more time together. And Katie’s such an integral part of the family, too. For better or worse, all of these things take time.
The same is true of Best Technology, which grew in 2009 to three full-time employees and now has clients from Sandusky to Hudson, a swath of northeast Ohio a hundred miles long and encompassing a fleet of over two thousand PCs. This didn’t just happen. It also took away from my enjoyable-but-time-consuming pastime of writing. I also joined the Rotary Club of Elyria in 2009, a service organization that has a very rigorous schedule and demands quite a bit.
At the end of the day, there’s very little time left for blogging, thought leadership, or punditry–whatever you’d like to call it. And I’m a little let down when I visit my own blog and don’t see anything fresh.
So–better time management–that’s my New Year’s Resolution. See you after the first.