Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Closer...
I'm getting excited! I figure I'm about three articles, some changes to my home page, and some clean up away from replacing the pages I've long (too long) had up serving as a placeholder for One Stop Web Support. By Sunday, I should have enough to warrant putting up the site I've been envisioning - or at least enough of it to be a start.

And that's not all. There are some moves I've long wanted to make that I've held off on the basis that it was pointless to pursue them until there was a site to put them on. Now I can once again consider them.

The challenge now will be to keep from getting too scattered again in my approach. One thing at a time. I remember back when I tried to get Mark to narrow down the MasterVisions projects to ten at a time. "We come up with an eleventh," I said, "and we need to decide to drop one of the others."

Ten at a time? It's a wonder we got anything done! But it's amazing how much more gets done when you narrow the focus to one thing at a time. Both he and I have gotten better at that over the years. Now if I can just hold on to that thought...
Jeff

Making the break
Today was a milestone of sorts. It may have been the first day I worked entirely on my own site—no work at all for MasterVisions. Not that there wasn't work to do, but I just stuck to my own site today. Come to think of it, I don't know if I even checked what few MasterVisions e-mail accounts I'm still responsible for today. That may be the case tomorrow, too.

I feel so close to having my redesigned site ready to upload that I'm just following the momentum in that direction. I wrote a couple of product reviews today. A couple more tomorrow and I should have enough content to feel justified in uploading the site. What a great feeling that'll be!

You know, it's been two years now that I've talked of putting my experience into play on my own sites. Finally carving out the time to get it done (or at least out where it can be seen—there's still a lot I want to add to it) will really be something to celebrate.

Then it will be back to sharing time between the MasterVisions site and my own. But this time I won't let my job serve as an excuse for putting my goals on the back burner.
Accomplishingly yours,
Jeff

More progress today
Today featured more progress, both on MasterVisions' gift site and my own. Strangely enough, though, I find myself sitting here with nothing to say. Would that be called blogger's block?

Just a routine day of work. But that's what it takes. I keep thinking that getting the redo of my site is only a couple of days away. We'll see tomorrow if that assessment is accurate. Until then, I think I'll get one last piece of work done on it and call it a night.
Jeff

Eager?
I went in for a couple of hours to train Mark and his office staff on how to make updates to the website. It's funny how two weeks ago I was really upset over turning things over. Today, I enjoyed being back in the role of a trainer and wished I could turn over more of the routine tasks.

I made sure I turned one of them over, once and for all, and felt good about it. And I actually feel good about the prospect of taking some of the pressure off of me of having the websites being entirely on my hands.

I'm eager to turn a lot of the work over and get moving in other directions. But am I really eager? Once I got home, I got some more done on one of the projects I needed to do, but I could have gotten more done.

I seem to have gotten way too interested in the upcoming NFL draft and spent a couple of hours of valuable time reading reports on potential draftees. Yeah, I've done some of that in past years, but usually not until the week before the draft (which is currently a month away).

One thing, though. I can't afford to let this become a regular practice. But I just couldn't seem to get myself going on more productive tasks once I got back from the office.

Considering I tend to put in seven days a week of working at least a few hours a day, I guess it's not too terrible for me to have one day in a week that I just have to get away from it. There are better ways of clearing my mind, though, than obsessing about the NFL draft.

It was a day of family things, too. I worked it out so I could take my wife and daughter out to lunch, drop them at a movie and pick them up after I was done at the office. And then, too, when we got home, one of my sons announced that a Marine recruiter was on his way there for a visit.

Ben didn't enlist yet, but it might not be all that bad for him to move ahead on his plans rather than continuing to slog through a job that leaves him feeling totally unchallenged for another six months before completing his plans to enlist. Sure, the prospect of him joining the armed forces is scary—especially in time of war—but you've got to admire him for his desire to pay a return to his country for the freedoms he has enjoyed.

As for me, tomorrow has no big blocks of time carved out of it like today did—at least none that I can anticipate. And with a day off (I'm considering that working only five hours today consitutes a day off?) from work, my head should be clear enough to get back into it tomorrow.
On to greater productivity—after a good night of sleep.
Jeff

A curse or a gift?
Most of today I spent in the office at MasterVisions. It was my usual day to help clear up the logjam from the weekend, namely three days of orders, drop-ship inquiries and the like.

It was more hectic than usual. Granted, I went in a little later today because the kids were off from school and I decided to sleep in a little. And I really didn't get started on the tasks until nearly lunch time because Mark and I spent so much time talking about directions for the future and discussing what specific projects I would work on.

But, still, I was rushing to get through my normal Monday tasks and barely got them done even though I stayed until 5 PM. Managing the drop-ship program has become a major portion of my Monday. I never would have guessed that it would turn into such a huge part of the business.

It's also becoming more clear that transitioning this daily work to Mark will not be as quick and simple as either Mark or I thought. There was no time for training Mark on some of the things I had planned to, and everywhere I look, I see another task that I'll have to bring him up to speed on before I can turn it over to him.

It seems I've become pretty tightly integrated with MasterVisions and it's going to take time to transfer those responsibilities. Is that my curse or my gift?

The same thing happened when my "two-month" consulting gig at Wells Fargo turned into eight years. Even then, my work there ended only because an edict was issued way above my supervisor's head that all long-term consultants throughout the company had to go.

I just seem to step into a position and quickly gain so much trust that I'm given almost unlimited freedom to carry out my work as I think best. Which leads to absolutely nobody else there having any idea how to do what I do.

This is the second time it's happened now. It's bizarre. I've never known of anyone else where that's happened even once and it's happened to me twice.

But the transition will happen and life will move on. That's the exciting thing about life; you never know what'll happen next.
Embrace the unknown,
Jeff

Loose ends and estimates
Just a bit of administration fit around family time today. I took some time off. The morning for church was a given, but I took Jo, my wife, grocery shopping instead of asking one of my sons to drive her. I made time for our semi-traditional Sunday pizza supper and I left the computer for a little TV with the family tonight.

Maybe not productive workwise, but needed. One thing I can't afford to forget is that I'm not just a worker; I'm a husband, a father and, oh yes, a human being with emotional and social needs to fill.

What work I did today focused on administration: getting my estimates together for MasterVisions to detail what loose ends I recommend tying up and what ongoing maintenance I recommend that I continue to do. And then I threw out all of the detailed MasterVisions work schedules I had drawn up for the year. That part actually felt pretty freeing.

One thing that surprised me, though. I've long felt like all the projects Mark and I had lined up for MasterVisions was unending. Yet as I went through the work plans and assessed what definite projects remained, I found that I've already cut a wide swath through the list of projects I had planned for this year. A lot of what I considered high priorities are already behind me.

There are still more that Mark may or may not decide to carry through, but significant progress has been made. It makes me feel better about cutting back on work for Mark. And Mark has seemed interested in completing a lot of the projects that remain. So who knows what I'll be doing yet.

I think more and more that the decision to rearrange our working arrangement will be good for both of us. I think we both had gotten into a rut where he was comfortable having me work almost full time for him, even though a lot of what I was doing was really too routine to be worth paying me consultants fees for. And I was comfortable with the stability of working solely for him.

Reassessing our work relationship forces us to look at everything with fresh eyes again—determine which projects are beneficial and which are we just slipping into just because every idea automatically got added to the docket.

And now I have a chance to explore the other directions that doing all my work for MasterVisions had pushed out of the way. Now if I can just avoid overbooking myself with plans for those things. I've already committed myself to three avenues that, the more I look into them, each look more like they could eat up my time full time.

But dealing with that will come tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on how much time I spend working in Mark's office tomorrow. I leave you with what I keep reminding myself: bite off the work in bite-size chunks.
Jeff

Not much to show for today
I checked out my son's site. His design work, as expected, was outstanding. What surprised me was how much he's grown in his copywriting. He's always been very formal and businesslike in what he write.s But this was downright good copywriting. Now if he can just get the right kind of traffic through there...

Otherwise, I got the rest of the main navigation pages created and another article ready for One Stop Web Support (although I would have hoped to have gotten all that done in a lot less than the four hours it actually took). And I started studying materials for one of the key programs whose products I plan to recommend. Very impressive, well beyond the high opinion I already had of their products. But more on my thoughts about them tomorrow. Tonight I actually plan to cut this off and go to bed.
Stay focused,
Jeff