Directions . . .

I have always been good with directions.  I think it stemmed from the fact that my parents were horrible with them.  My dad could get lost on his way to work in the morning.  Because I spent so much time on family trips when we were lost I made a decision to pay attention.  Soon I began to correct my Dad and tell him how to go. In his frustration he would tell me to be quiet and he knew where he was.

Once we were so lost that we went through the same intersection four times.  The fourth time I spoke up and he shut me down.  The fifth time I said, "Look, I know where we should turn and since we have been through here five times what do we have to lose if you just listen to me."  So he did.  Ten minutes later we were pulling into our destination.  After that he stopped telling me to be quiet.

It's the small victories that seem to have the largest impact.

Why the trip down memory lane?  Well I have found my direction for what I am doing here.  I know this relates only tangentially but I figured what the hell.  I spent some time today working on what I could do here in the online realm.  I had to follow a few criteria so I would be willing to undertake the venture.

1).  I had to do it because I wanted to and not because it would "Make me rich."  I have had a tendency to want to get into things that would make me money and that would be the main reason behind it.  I knew I couldn't do that here.  I needed to do something because I wanted to do it and not because it would make me money.  If it does, in the long run, make me money then that is great.  But I can't get into this with that goal in mind.

2). Along with that I had to do something that I have a deep interest so I can focus on it and keep up with it.

So I sat down and listed all my interests.  This gave me 20 items that I had to choose from.  From there I selected the ones that I knew I had enough residual interest in to actually keep up with it.  Here I had 10 items.  From here I lumped a few together because they were really close in terms of subject matter.  At this point I had 7 items.  Then I went down the list and focused on whether I could do a blog and podcast based on the subject matter.  This gave me 5 items.  From here I wrote out pitch documents that basically went over my overall thoughts on how the podcasts would be run and how the blog would be set up.

After all that trimming I then labeled the five subjects in terms of launching them.  I picked one to be first, the most logical one that I could support on a regular basis from the get go, and then the rest fell in line.

It was a lot of work, and I know the upcoming stuff will be a lot of work as well but I'm ready.  I will go into more detail as I finalize everything and I get my first episode out.  Also I need to continue to think on how this blog fits into all this.  We shall see what happens.