I want to spend this vomit thinking about the contributions I want to make. I’m approaching the two-thirds mark (666 word vomits), so I think I need to start thinking about ‘life after the vomits’.
One thing I’ve been feeling strongly about quite recently is that I need to own a blog that’s focused on a niche that I care about, that isn’t based on my primary domain name (visakanv.com). I’ve already bought a domain, but I’m not going to talk about it directly on this blog right now until I’ve made something of it. I have some goals – I want to publish about 100 posts, do some promotion, build some relationships anonymously, get the backlinks and so on. This actually feels like some weight off my shoulders, because I can simplify what I do on my primary site.
I’m going to simplify visakanv.com – I want to make it very easy for anybody Googling for me to get a simple, clear picture of who I am and what I do, and get links to my absolute best work. I also have a memoir project that I want to do.
I’m going to take everything Singapore related and move it to visakanv.com/sg/. Over there I’m going to split things according to topical iss ues. National Service. The education system and the pressure-cooker atmosphere around it. The issue of censorship, especially how mindlessly it’s done. Addressing things like how sterile and stodgy the country supposedly is. I find myself thinking about what the news has been like in the past decade that I’ve been observing it, and how there are all these recurring patterns. I find myself thinking about what I saw on slatestarcodex – a joke about having a schedule for arguments – in January we’ll argue about this, in February we’ll argue about that, and so on. I find myself thinking… maybe that might be something worth doing? Yes, actually. I think I’ll that. It’s already halfway through January… but let’s just go for it anyway.
What else? I also have many book reviews that I want to get through, and TV show reviews, movie reviews, product reviews. So how do I prioritize? Which goes first? Should I put one of the projects (reviews vs SG) on the backburner, or should I try to do both? And I also have the project I talked about earlier on. And I have this word vomit project as well. Typing all this out, it becomes pretty clear that I have a little too many things to do all at once – I also have to work on my job – which is not just a time-pass for me; it’s important to me that I get my work done well and continue to develop myself in my career. That’s a lot of things to do. How am I going to do all of it? What’s my top priority? Right now, my top priority is to publish this word vomit. After that, my next top priority is work – I’m getting paid for it, and my professional reputation is tied up in it, but I think most importantly I feel gratitude to and affection for my team, and I want to contribute in that way so that I can do more for that.
Oh yeah, pause – and I have my marketing blog too, which is an overlap between what I do at work and what I want to talk about in public about marketing, advertising and so on. Let’s list these out again for clarity’s sake–
- visakanv.com – the nexus from which everything else comes out of; a list of my best and favorite essays
- visakanv.com/blog/ – I’m going to have content about storytelling, about writing, about book reviews, product reviews and so on.
- visakanv.com/sg/ – to write things that contribute to discourse in Singapore, encouraging people to think more critically, to try and transcend above us-vs-them dynamics and think about what’s best for Singapore in the long term
- visakanv.com/marketing/ – to share my experience, insights and learnings as a SaaS content marketer over the past 4 years
- visakanv.com/1000/ – the writing project that I’m working on here. Lots of the content here will be repurposed for other sites
- ???.com [to be revealed later] – a blog about productivity, GTD, procrastination, fitness, health
That’s a lot of stuff. It seems like a lot of stuff. I will have to prioritize. I think my biggest priority actually is still going to be the /1000/ project – I want to finish this and get it out of my system. I guess I’m going to write on the wall… okay. I just took a few minutes to write down all of the above on postits that go on my whiteboard in the study so that I can look at them every day. [1]
[1] Which got me thinking now – what else should go on my whiteboard? What should come down from it? I have a few reminders to self that I could turn into blogposts – I think it’s important to make sure that the entire whiteboard is constantly updated. Everything should be completely wiped off every so often, so that there’s an opportunity to start over from scratch. Otherwise I fall into the trap of having things just become a little too familiar, and I don’t really pay attention to them. This is not good. This is not what I want. I want things to get addressed, taken care of. I want them to be resolved. I want things to go from my Whiteboard (which is where things are played around with in an experimental, generative sort of stage) to my Things (mac app – where I come up with physical next-action tasks to follow up on). And things should then either get done or Next’d or Someday’d, and I should just keep kicking butt at whatever’s on my list. And every week or so I should step back and go, is this helping me get to where I want to go? Do I need to revise where I want to go? I’m going to be a beast this year. I’m going to contribute like mad. Let’s do this.