Growing new patterns of work

It’s spring and the farmhouse (AKA Planet45) is alive with socializing and romancing birds, knee high dandelions and buttercups, woodchucks, mice, ants, bees, and a hundred thousand other things stretching wings, legs, fronds, pistils, and what have you. It’s an exciting time to be on Planet45. It’s a stirring, daunting, and exciting time to be embarking on new ventures too.

Unlike the shrubs blasting into bloom around the house, I take tentative steps to establish a little business. In an economy like this, one searches for gigs and full-time employment at the same time, which in the abstract ought to require the same sets of skills. Identifying prospects might be the same for gigs and employment, but going after those prospects is different. Positioning oneself for employment requires a level of visioning and strategizing that is different from that required for landing small projects. Establishing a pattern of business with a client requires long-term thinking that takes time away from job-hunting.

It’s hard to maintain that balance. I’ve picked up bits of advice here and there on the internet (and I am sorry that in some cases the attributions never made it into my head). Here’s one I like when I get overwhelmed: do the revenue-producing work first thing. For example, I get an occasional paper to edit or grants research to do- those earn income and help me to “live another day” to do the longer term work. Having that essential, well-defined task to complete puts structure into days that can deteriorate quickly into amorphous blobs. Invariably I learn something or pick up a nugget of inspiration as well. And knowing a little income is on the way helps the focus on more creative or visionary tasks later in the day.

Growing things require care, nutrition, structure. What do you do to help grow new patterns of behavior in your professional life?

 

The World is too much with us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers  – William Wordsworth

When was the last time you really focused on something? If it was ever easy for you to focus, is it getting more difficult lately? There are some tasks that are inherently painful to focus on- like job-hunting for example. And we are told too that if we wish to keep an edge we should be tapping the powers of the internet, blogging, twittering, searching. These are good things. But it is possible to be washed overboard by the attention-spamming power of Twitter– possible to become self-absorbed blogging– and exploded into pieces by the process of searching for jobs or information.

Sometimes one has to step away from the keyboard. Forced absences. Refraining from jumping on the computer first thing (this is hard to avoid, but I am working on it). Spending time outdoors – yes, outdoors where you really can’t use your laptop fruitfully when the sun is up! My favorite antidote to a long day of fractured thinking: taking the dog for a run someplace beautiful while the sun is setting. Try it. Your attention span will thank you for it.

to finish with the Poet’s lovely sonnet:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; (1)
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, (2)
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus (3) rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton (4) blow his wreathed horn.