RSS is a powerful yet under utilized medium. Yet every so often someone comes up with a really novel way to use it. I ran across a site the other day that I thought I would pass onto everyone. If you ever ship packages via USPS, FedEx, UPS, or DHL then you can have a custom RSS url generated to track a specific package. Pretty cool huh.
As always Stay Focused
Freelance is a tricky dynamic. Anyone who has done any freelance work should easily relate. I have actively been pursuing a full time career in Freelance graphics and web design work for about the last year and a half. I can honestly say that I have run into a hurdle I hadn’t anticipated. Outside of the normal fluxuation in business (ie. sometimes busy and sometimes slow) which is to be expected when doing any web related work when not working for a design firm. However, by actively pursuing I really mean looking to do it full time. This would be a major step on my part. I am the bread winner of the household, with my wife staying home to watch our children (both under the age of 2). So whats the problem?
Before I expose what exactly the problem is I must give some background. I have a full time job (non-web related) which is presently paying the bills. I do all my web work part time after work and on weekends to bring in a bit of extra money to help when things are tight. I truly enjoy doing graphics and web work and would love to do it full time (hence the reason I have been actively pursuing it). [enter problem]
When you have a full time job already you need to fit things in whenever you can. That was great when I was doing it more for a learning tool, however during the busy part of the natural freelance fluxuation I am almost too busy to do it all in that ’spare’ time. Yet, the amount of work is not enough to replace the full time job. In other words it crosses the happy balance between spare time and time consuming. I need more time to complete everything during those periods, yet no time is available to do it. Sounds great doesn’t it? Wrong! I would love to take the leap of faith and quit my job and take on the web work full time, but as a father of two and as a responsible husband (as I hope I am), for the future of my family I can not simply do that unless the freelance work supports it. Yet I can’t pursue anymore work without more time, yet I can’t take away time as that is my full time job. The ever familiar catch 22.
I am always looking for more work, and am happy to take it. Until the money is such that I can no longer have a traditional full time job I have realized that I am going to be stuck in that cycle. I would love to keep researching this topic as I am sure there are resources to help.
Any thoughts? Any ideas? Anyone else ever run into this same thing?
Till then… Stay Focused!
I most certainly am not the only one posting a Happy New Year post, and will not be the last either. So instead of the cliche entry I thought I would focus on one very noticable difference, the look.
Yes that’s right, only a few short days ago I told you I was working on a new look. It’s finished. As a matter of fact if you are viewing the site now you should be able to tell something has changed. If you are reading this onin in the RSS feed, then visit now to see the look. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I do. It is a bit vintage, but I like the new feel.
I am still working on a few things (CSS tweaks), everything should be working and viewable just fine. If you are one of the lucky ones who run into an error please let me know as I will be fixing anything unexpected. Let’s see new look, upgraded WP as well. Thought it was about time to go from 1.5 to 2.0 (even though the stable version was only released a short time ago).
Happy New Year and my prayer for you is that you would have a happy and prosperious new year indeed!
Till then… Stay Focused!
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