Do apologize for lack of updates, found myself in a bit of a rut these last few weeks. Spent a lot of time evaluating some things really. Mainly the direction things seem to be going in my life.
The main thing is my current career path. I resolved the issues that occurred in the past, because looking back those events actually worked out for me and presented with some better opportunities. In fact, I don’t hold any ill will towards the company or said individuals for past acts.
No, my main concern is that the work I do doesn’t bring me any kind of enjoyment. In fact, every day seems to be like the day before and I just begin to feel like nothing more than a drone. I do my job and go home, and repeat the process again the next day.
It got me thinking about Danny Choo’s various inspirational articles. About how life is so short to waste time doing things that don’t make you happy. And that got me thinking about this site. Anime and otaku culture is something that I can say make me happy, and I like sharing those things. Same with photography and even creating this site. All of those things I enjoy doing. Am I saying that I want to try and make a living being a blogger? Probably not at first, as I am still learning a lot about the medium. But its a nice dream to have, so why not set that goal?
This also has me thinking about the direction I want to take this site. Both in content and in design. I have a few ideas about exactly what I want to do in regards to both.
I will continue to focus on anime / otaku themed posts. Going to start talking more about games, mainly role playing games, both offline and online, as well some non-video games (like collectable card games). Some technology releated posts, like new web trends or technology regarding user generated content (like what the new iPhone 3G S makes possible). Also going to try to post more insights and tutorials because I think sharing our knowledge and experiences can each other grow.
Site design wise, already planning out my next theme. Currently referred to as “Project M,” it will incorporate features that I have been wanting to get into the site. For starters, automating image resizing and thumbnail creation on posts. This one aspect of the site has been one of the things that has taken up a lot of my time when creating posts. Learning how to make that work, hopefully I can get it implemented soon.
I also want to intergrate Twitter and other social networking sites into my design better. I noticed that Twitter is using bit.ly to shorten long URLs in tweets now. What I really like about bit.ly is that it tracks information on the links its builds. Which I believe could be a valuable tool. If I am understanding the APIs correctly, I’ll be able to create a system that will allow users to share my blog posts with just a click of a button and have it feed back into my account on bit.ly for analytic purposes. Needless to say, kinda excited to get it working.
There are a few other APIs I am trying to wrap my head around too that I think could really prove benefitical to my design plans. But my focus will be to get a cleaner design in place that incorporates the image resizing and sharing options I just described. I will roll out other enhancements once I have those in place and working like I want.
I guess basically the point I am trying to get at is that I am working on getting out of my rut and trying to move forward to a day where I can say that I am making a living doing something that makes me happy. That every day doesn’t seem like the one before it, but that in order to do that I have to look towards tomorrow and work hard on making my dreams a reality.
