James McCullough

For Freelancers: Breaking the Time Barrier

The first thing you think when someone offers to sell you a perfectly decent- looking car for a thousand dollars is that something must be wrong under the hood

When I received the email notifying me that the co-founder of Freshbooks, Mike McDerment, had released a new book for freelancers, I knew I had to take a look. It definitely did not disappoint.

Breaking the Time Barrier is all about setting the price of your work, whether it be consulting services, design work, copy writing, and so forth. It is a short book, taking no more than an hour to read completely, and is an easy read. It is styled as a conversation between Steve, a man starting up a design company, and Karen, a friend of a friend who has agreed to talk to him about the business.

It is one of those books that is invaluable in transforming the way we think about price, beyond the standard hourly rate. Especially pay attention during the section titled, "The seven mutual benefits of exploring value with your clients."

I definitely think this book is worth reading a few times to get the full value out of it and won't be leaving my digital library for a long time.

• freelance
• work

Locked Out and Saying F*ck It

When you say Fuck It, you give in to the flow of life - you stop doing what you don't want to do, you finally do what you've always wanted to do, and you stop listening to people and listen to yourself.

-- John C. Parkin, Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way¹

I stopped writing on this site back in February. I was becoming rather frustrated in the amount of ideas flowing around in my head and struggling to get them published. I thought I had perfected my writing work flow to the point where I couldn't possibly change anything more about it. I was able to publish from my iPhone, my iPad, my computer easily.

Thought --> Device --> Blog

Then I started experiencing hiccups. Things didn't look right on my site or I would experience an error in publishing. The more frustrated I was, the less motivated I was to tackle the problems and get moving again. The solution was always lingering in the back of my mind since I started reading more "geeky" writers who were publishing on either their own platforms or using something freely available that wasn't Wordpress, Tumblr, and so forth. I knew I would probably feel more motivated to write if I experienced less friction overall.

Instead of fixing things, I just stopped.

Every now and then I would glance at the domain, let out a sigh, then close the browser and move onto something else. This went on for months. I would read further about how people transferred their sites onto new platforms, get into the manuals to discover how I could go about it, even setting up some of these platforms on an old PC to prove to myself that I could get it working.

Getting those platforms set up properly proved more challenging than I expected, and only caused more friction with the flow of work, so I stopped delving into that area.

The turning point was receiving emails saying bots were trying to log into my Wordpress account. The IP addresses kept changing so I couldn't find a reliable way to block them out completely. Without finding a good solution for that, the result was I was denied access to my account because of all the failed attempts to log in. It always boggles my mind that illegitimate attempts to log in denied the legitimate attempts completely.

I could still view my site, of course, but publishing something new was impossible. Wordpress denied all access to my blog regardless of the method I was using. It forced me to either keep fighting these bots or say, "Fuck it," and move to a new platform with all the problems that come with it.

So, I said, "Fuck it," and broke my site.

The one time I was able to access my site, I exported all the posts, converted them into Markdown, and then decided what to do. I discovered Scriptogr.am by pure accident. My favourite writing application, Byword, had received an update that allowed publishing to various blog platforms. Scriptogr.am was one of the options, which prompted me to explore it, put some posts up and see how it performed.

The short answer is I liked it enough to keep pushing to make it work, which leads me to the current status of the site. There are roughly 35 posts out of the nearly 300 I had on the Wordpress domain. I curated this first batch because they represented what I felt was the most useful writing and stuff I enjoyed reading again myself. I am sure I will be adding more to it as time goes on. Definitely not the same amount of bloat as the other site.

Otherwise, not much else will change. Posts will still appear on Facebook and Twitter, be found through search engines and so forth. Less worrying about appearance, and more focus on the words.

I still am the same person as I was before, after all:

Polymath, father, lover of literature and coffee.²

A Potential Change

After receiving an incredible amount of emails notifying me that people have been trying to gain access to my blog (on Wordpress), I thought I would seek out alternatives. I first contemplated setting up my own blog on a spare desktop computer, but I realized how cumbersome the process actually is.

I'm not that much of a geek.

Instead, I have been curating my 300+ posts and transferring the stuff I am most proud of here. The domain foursides.ca will get redirected here eventually and I will bundle up the other posts into a PDF for those people who really want to read everything I have to offer.

Take a look, try it on different mobile devices, and send me your thoughts on Twitter or on Facebook.

More later.¹

Mentally Exhausted

I'm not particularly stressed, I'm not particularly overwhelmed. I'm not even mad, but for the past week I have just been feeling bored.

– Ben Brooks, Mentally Fatigued

Unlike Ben, I am feeling quite stressed, but I can definitely relate to his feelings of boredom.

I can never quite pin-down exactly what is happening. I will scan through Twitter, or Facebook, or the RSS feeds and mentally throw my hands up in the air and give up. Very little captures my interest so intently that I want to explore further into a topic and gets me excited to share it with everyone. I almost want to take that drastic measure of nuking everything and starting over. I know better to do that, however, because I know it won't solve my problem.

I am likely to build myself up to the same point in time only to get frustrated again and want to renew myself.

Ben's solution is to take a break. Others take a digital sabbatical.

I could never completely detach myself from the digital world, mainly because my job depends on it. Taking a mental break would be welcomed. This is fitting considering we are in the period of Lent.

With this in mind, I will strive to do a few things over the next month:

1. Stop reading the Twitter stream, and only interact with it through updates, mentions, direct messages.
2. Same thing with Facebook. This may be a great break from seeing all the inspriational/funny graphics polluting the internet.
3. Condense my reading of Google Reader to scanning at the end of the week, not daily, and liberally use "Mark All as Read."
4. Do more slow reads to fully understand longform pieces and read more outside of my own home.
5. Write more, in generally.

We will see how well this goes for me. I naturally retreat to reading online when stressed out so it will be a challenge to not pick up the phone to scan Twitter and such.

Who else is participating by giving up something during Lent?

• life
• work

Dishonest Truths

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

-- Plato

When someone offers you a compliment, regardless of what it is about, how do you respond?

Most people I come across give the same reaction, "Thank you, but ..."

Do I really need to finish that sentence? It's rampant, it's everywhere I go. The person receiving the compliment isn't really at fault though, because the other thing I see happening are the dishonest truths.

To me, the dishonest truths are the phrases told to someone to bolster their ego, to break down their defenses in order to utilize them at a later date. Whether it is telling someone they are doing a good job before telling them they have to work overtime for free; telling someone that their cooking was really tasty but then expecting them to cook every meal; or going up to a woman to say they are beautiful and intelligent in order to go home with them that night.

The reversal happens so frequently that when we know it is unlikely to come, we have the tendency to not believe the person. We do not have a fear of that darkness that is to come later, because it is being lit by the good light. Not having that darkness at the end is not a natural feeling for us. We fight it, resist it so much that we live our lives with a burden of doubt in who we are and our abilities.

Instead of focusing on the darkness at the end, what if we instead choose to believe in the light and not allow it to be extinguished?

Just because someone tells you a compliment in order to get something out of you does not mean that they told you a lie.

You are smart. You are attractive. You are a brilliant writer/chef/baker/designer. You are a valuable worker.

If we get over this fear of the light and believe in every word that someone says, we will live a much fuller life. This isn't to say we can't be constantly refining who we are in all areas of life. What I am saying is you are smart, and can become smarter, healthier, turn good into great.

Believe in yourself; help others believe in themselves.

• life
• truth

Obsession x Voice

Find your obsession.

Every day, explain it to

one person you respect.

Edit everything, skip shortcuts,

and try not to be a dick.

Get better.

Merlin Mann, How to Blog

My Sunday morning was spent listening to a discussion between Merlin Mann and John Gruber that has this ridiculous title, "HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!. The discussion happened at SXSW back in 2009. It is still as relevant today as it was then.

If there was a Hall of Fame for individual podcasts, this may be a member of the first class. It is incredibly insightful for not only writers, but also anyone looking to start up their own business. Every venture comes down to one simple equation according to Merlin: Obsession times Voice.

Topic times voice. Or, if you’re a little bit more of a maverick, obsession times voice. So what does that mean? I think all of the best nonfiction that has ever been made comes from the result of someone who can’t stop thinking about a certain topic — a very specific aspect of a certain topic in some cases. And second, they got really good at figuring out what they had to say about it.

These are two items that I am continually struggling to capture accurately. I definitely know I don't have a single obsession like some people generally do, and it is difficult for me to pare down all of my interests into one broader category. I look at the archives of this blog and keep wondering, "Who is this guy?"

I have always believed that one single topic can become boring and may not be incredibly useful in the longterm. Read my manifesto to learn more about that belief. I bring this up because it was brought up in the discussion surrounding obsession. Both Merlin and John have a belief that narrowly-focused blogs will grow an audience, while blogs with a variety of topics may be ultimately doomed. I do have to agree with them that a single focus blog will shoot up in popularity quicker though.

The part about voice is something else I keep questioning with my writing. It is a forever evolving process. I will never know for sure if I captured who I really am here, because so very few people I know "for real" read what I write. I don't have the same check and balances that some people may have with their friends, a partner, a mastermind group, and so forth.

Merlin suggested that the best way to discover your voice is to write to someone you imagine reading your site. John's response is that he writes for an alternative version of himself. I thought I was doing the same thing, but now I find myself thinking about my daughter. What better way to capture my thoughts, what I found important at the time, and the trials of life I have gone through than with this blog to share with her when she is older?

Maybe it will help me find the focus that I am desperately needing here.

Notes

Reminder for the podcast via MacSparky

John Gruber's thoughts afterwards: Obsession Times Voice

Roo Reynolds' Panel Notes

Merlin Mann's talk, How to Blog

Interview with CBC by Merlin on same topic, How to Blog

• writing
• life
• obsession
• work

Saying Hello

It always seems strange to me when you first get to know someone new.

There is no easy way to break through that threshold and create a mutual level of respect and comfort automatically. It's a slow process of discovery which can only happen if both parties are equally aggressive in wanting to discover that new person. That comfort level is impossible to create with only one person writing an email to someone, or giving a monologue while standing in an elevator together. Without some kind of response from the other person, the conversation ends and the process of getting to know each other is finished.

It is a challenge to come up with compelling topics to keep the conversation flowing. The internet makes this a little easier because people practically wear their interests on their chests. You can scroll through their online history to find out how they behave, their mood shifts, how often they complain. People are easily discoverable through a quick Google search about their name or reverse looking up their email address, too. Looking up my email address, for example, will give you almost everything you'd ever want to know about me, except my grades in high school. You could find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, my resume, my websites, my embarrassing fantasy league teams, and so forth.

More than that though is how we choose to communicate on the Internet allows someone to develop a better sense of who you are and whether we could ever get along with that person. This is not evident on a site like Facebook where we normally have a relationship (usually) with someone before connecting through the site. But it is the case in publishing mediums that have a strong informal voice being used (Twitter, podcasts, blogging.)

By being less restrictive in our words and images, we open ourselves up for a connection, whether it is emphatic with our struggles or apathetic with our opinions. The updates that at first seem mundane are actually a window into who that person really is. We can never get a sense of who someone is if they restrain communicating their thoughts in some way.

I was reminded of this when I stumbled across Adam Brault's piece, I quit Twitter for a month and it completely changed my thinking about mostly everything:

The level of candor people often share on Twitter, particularly over time, has given me a strong sense of who some of the people I follow are, how they think, and what they value. I end up including many of the people on my Twitter list in the somewhat fuzzy set of people I empathize with.

The downside of the openness is that we can all be more selective in who we choose to connect with. When you bump into someone with a different personality or mindset online, we are more likely to discard them in search of the more ideal friendship/partner. This does not leave much room to discover your common interests and learn how to get along with one another. It is rather frightening with how specific one can be in searching for someone to connect with.

It can also be equally disappointing when you finally meet someone in person that you have been building a connection with online. Much like how we build expectations in how a favourite book will be portrayed in a movie, we build expectations in how our real life conversations will play out. Sometimes, it is as though those two people have known each other forever with a seamless transition of online interactions to real ones. Others, it feels like you are starting all over with a vague sense of who that person is.

Being more selective online does not always guarantee a great friendship. Sometimes, you have to reach past your comfort zone to discover that magical person you didn't know existed. Take a chance on that person you feel resistance to because they upset you in some way or pay more attention to someone you first viewed as trivial. Maybe it won't be worthwhile in the end, but maybe, just maybe, it will blossom into a great friendship.

I will be the first person to admit that this isn't easy. I can struggle to say hello to someone at the elevator, so reaching out to someone outside of my comfort zone online is a challenge. It is a challenge I have accepted, because more often than not it has turned into a growing friendship or business partnership.

Saying "Hello" while passing in the hallway is a pleasantry; saying "Hello" online is an invitation to connect and build something together.

But you must start that all by saying, "Hello."

• life
• relationships

One Sip is All it Takes

There is nothing quite like the sound of a ceramic mug when it first touches down on a table, full of steaming, hot liquid.

It is a mental signal to us marking the end of a previous moment and the start of a new one: it is time.

It is a beginning of a time for work, of reflection, of relaxation, or a conversation amongst peers.

Drawing the cup up to our lips is like a comma in our life being written down. A pause to savour the smell of the tea or coffee, to gaze across at our screens or friends and think of what will happen next. A taste of the liquid brings us back to life regardless of whether we were alive before that sip or not. And as we swallow that first sip, another pause happens allowing us to have that universal thought, "This hits the spot."

That first sip is most likely ingrained into us from birth, because I have witnessed my own three year old daughter have those same moments when drinking some warm tea or hot chocolate. There's a sip, a pause, and then a question of "What's that?"

Yes, what is that mysterious liquid that brings so much goodness to our bodies in just one cup? It doesn't matter if you prefer coffee or tea, or apple cider or chocolate milk. Once they are warmed up and put into a cup , they are all made equal. A warm, magical sip causing us to breath again and become whole.

It's the one thing we all look forward to after a cold afternoon of playing in the snow, or a long walk through the mists after a rainfall, or a miserable sleep: a warm drink to snap us back into reality and instantly make us feel a thousand times better from head to toe.

One sip is all it takes.¹

• life
• coffee
• tea

Decision Fatigue

Decision fatigue is real talk when it comes to the web.

-- Joshua Blankenship, Some Thoughts on Web Content Strategy

Through my life, I have been fairly good at making choices. I don't spend a lot of time doing price comparisons, looking up reviews of products, sorting out what to order off a menu, and so forth. I tend to enter an environment either knowing roughly or exactly what I am wanting, or it simply does not matter to me. For example, if I need a power bar, I tend to scan the options for something that isn't incredibly bulky and go for it.

Making those same choices on the web is difficult. More likely impossible. My mind is simply too interested in everything, regardless of the subject matter. I have a hard time hitting the off-switch when it comes to stop reading about something, scanning through Twitter, or getting lost in the world of YouTube videos. The absolute worst is Wikipedia or when I am trying to solve an issue that is usually technical in nature.

Tonight, the project was setting up an old Windows desktop computer as a Linux web server. Incredibly geeky thing to start doing for no real purpose other than wanting the challenge to see if I could get it working.¹ For someone not entirely familiar with the command line interface, the task has been a bit more daunting than I first expected. After several attempts of trying something, researching it on my iPhone, having a page up on the iPad to copy commands from, I decided to stop for the night.

Most people would most likely sink into their chairs to watch television. Lately, more people are probably scanning Facebook or Twitter. I usually go through all the stories showing up in Google Reader.

One of the posts led me to something Joshua wrote yesterday, How to Ensure Your Ideas Are Never Criticized. Being the curious guy I am, I kept reading before coming across the post I quoted above.

His post is about writing content and how people need fewer options because the amount of content is getting out of control.

Everything we do on the web is a part of a whole, and if the whole doesn’t sing in harmony, that dissonance will confuse and turn off people.

After I read the "decision fatigue is real" line, and went through the piece again, the above sentence really stood out for me. Not in terms of how others were viewing the web, but instead with how I was using the web.

I started to think about how I could use the web better to align more with who I am. There are some things I share on Twitter or Tumblr that are ephemeral, not something I would ever want to read or listen to again. If it isn't something I don't want to see again, what are the chances someone else will want to click through to see it?

I don't think I need to develop a full content publishing strategy since this is more hobby than business for me, but I do want to rethink about what I share and what I create here.

This blog has been forever evolving for me, it seems. Time to nail it down.[^2]

• life
• work

New Year, New Approach

New Year's Eve is meant to be a time to connect with friends and family. Not so for me. I have been at home cleaning up my office, doing dishes, and settling down on my couch to catch up on some reading that has been collecting. Reading about what people are up to on Facebook/Twitter, and starting to see some of the drunken shenanigans on Instagram makes me wish I was out enjoying myself like in years past.

But not entirely. You always read about how you have to be happy with yourself before you can be happy with someone in a relationship. That's true, but it's also important when wanting to be around others. At least for me, it is. I always find I enjoy myself better when I'm out and about and not having to worry about some other problems going on in my life.

There are moments when it is appropriate to sit down over coffee and get things off your chest, try to make sense of what is happening around you. Times of celebrations are not really a good time to be talking about your problems - inevitably, they seem to happen towards the end of the night with someone sitting on the toilet crying with a few people trying to comfort them and the rest wanting that person to move out of the way. I know by now that if I go out somewhere, I am never going to fully enjoy myself because my mind will always think about everything but that moment I am experiencing.

Leading up to the end of the year, I started to explore more about the Zen Buddhist way of life and have a better understanding of the philosophy. I am going to have to destroy a lot of my way of thinking to understand it completely. For now, it has been a good guide in developing a new approach for the coming year. Becoming a bit more empty in my mind and being more present with who I am with and where I am, living life without expectations.

The thoughts and ideas I have throughout the day need to be refocused into positive energy within me, not the negative pulses of wants/needs/what-ifs that are pushed through my mind currently. Instead of the ideas being bottled up in my mind, I need to get them out. Writing here helps, but I am starting to wonder if I need to find some other outlets for my creative energies.

Merlin Mann was talking a bit about this in one of the recent episodes of Back to Work where he says that people need to stop saying they aren't an artist. Everyone is and can be an artist once they discover their medium to work in and communicate their ideas. The photography I capture (apart from the pictures of my daughter) is a synthesis of my mindset at the moment and where I am. I need to practice photography on a regular basis and perhaps capture some words at the same time to visualize my ideas better. I need to discover a better way to show the story of my life, whether here, Instagram or Tumblr.

That is becoming a little more evident to me as I rekindle a love for comic books. I was never a die-hard comic lover growing up. It was too expensive to follow along with all the story lines being split up between multiple series with the same characters. They were also almost exclusively about super heroes. Series like The Walking Dead didn't show up until I was in University - no way was I going to spend my precious dollars on comics then.

With my iPad, that world has reopened itself to me through the ComiXology app. Subscribing and downloading digital copies, archiving them and letting you discover new series to follow easily is incredible. Merlin Mann^{[^1]} has been raving about this one series, Saga, a lot so I thought it would make a good choice to explore. The first issue was free, the others only a few dollars. After the first issue, I bought the second to see what happens, and then again, and...

So far, it is a compelling story and highly recommended, and I will write more about it, but it made me start thinking about story and how we share it with people. Everyone has a story to share, thoughts that need to be communicated. Reading through Saga has given me a better example of what happens when words and graphics come together. It is completely opposite of the responses I have when I see a lot of the inspirational graphics that flood the Twitter and Facebook. The artwork and words compliment each other rather than a random image being pulled to correspond with the words. Those graphics politicize the images, in my opinion, changing our emotional response to the image through the words rather than building a stronger argument together.

I want to avoid that.

I want to discover myself by practicing Buddhism. And through the discoveries I make, I want to develop my own style to express myself and the stories I want to share.

A new year, a new approach.

Reading List

For those interested in the books I am reading about Buddhism and trying to find direction in my life:

Through explorations of the three pillars of Zen--teaching, practice, and enlightenment--Roshi Philip Kapleau presents a comprehensive overview of the history and discipline of Zen Buddhism. An established classic, this 35th anniversary edition features new illustrations and photographs, as well as a new afterword by Sensei Bodhin Kjolhede, who has succeeded Philip Kapleau as spiritual director of the Rochester Zen Center, one of the oldest and most influential Zen centers in the United States.

-- Three Pillars of Zen

• life
• zen