Speaking of Sucking

In 30 days I’ve shipped about … 5 things.

So yeah, that didn’t work out so great.

“WTF?” you might ask.

Yeah, I know. Lame. But you know what? I just wasn’t into it. When I started on 30-in-30 the first time, back in March, I was gung ho. I was pumped. I knew what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. Then – almost immediately – the doctors visits and tests started up (culminating in colonoscopy) and I didn’t think I’d be able to finish respectably.

Well I know better NOW, don’t I? Jeez. If I had kept my mouth shut I’d have had about 14 releases in that first 30 days. Personally, I expected to end up in the low 20s, so 14 wouldn’t have been too bad. Especially given the health stuff.

But this… restarting and then just flaming out? Ugh. Tres lame. And no excuses. I suck. I actually considered dropping the whole thing about two weeks ago, but I’m great at deluding myself. “I can still pull this off!” I said.

Obviously.

The biggest problem overall has been motivation. I just didn’t have the vision for 30-in-30 that I had back in March. Also, my focus changed. In March I figured I’d knock out a lot of little projects that had been piling up and maybe get a few larger projects off the ground, and it would all work out. When I came back at this in May I realized that I didn’t care about the little stuff. I could only think about the bigger projects.

I’m like that though, at least for my personal projects. Butterfly-brained. When there is a client or an employer there is external motivation, and often external scaffolding (coworkers, systems, tools, etc.) that make getting things done much easier. But when it’s my own personal interests, that’s where I falter. I am the cobbler. My personal projects go unshod.

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up though. I don’t generally like to stop when I fail. (Definition of crazy?) I tend to back up and go more slowly to see where I fucked up and to try to manage a little better.

So I’ll be taking another shot at this. I might just have to scale it down a bit. More later.