I agree. This week has gone very quickly. Tomorrow will be very busy as well. At work, I have a schedule laid out for 9/20 through 12/31/08. I have estimates on when things are to be done and what I anticipate working on during a given week. I have given a copy to my manager and, when she returns from a day off tomorrow, I'm hoping we sit down and talk about it. I am anxious for the next months to come and go. There is a lot to be done and not a lot of flexibility as to when things are to be done. I think the challenge of scheduling it out is something I'm good at. I look at priorities and what I know about - understanding there are bound to be projects I don't learn about until they are sitting on my desk as well as projects that are created on Monday morning, programmed Monday afternoon, to my dept (QA) by Tuesday @ 8 AM, tested, and released by noon. Then it comes to me for documentation. My stack of work is quite large right now. Not all of the changes in my bin actually have documentation changes. However, I'm betting a lot of them do. I also have 50+ e-mail messages with suggestions for doc changes, including ones I sent to myself that note that a .htm file needs to be changed from a table-based layout to a tableless layout.
There are also authentic changes to the documentation that need to be done.
One thing to note is that my manager had sent along something she thought should be changed. It was the first documentation change I had made since 9/4/08, according to the tracking document I maintain. TWENTY DAYS WITHOUT MAKING A SINGLE DOCUMENTATION CHANGE! I hadn't realized it had been that long. There are plenty of things I could be doing with documentation but, for the rest of this week and into next week, I really don't think I will work on any doc changes. I'm hoping to have my other work done by noon on Tuesday so I can start making the doc changes. I have ~3 weeks before I will have to start doing what I've been doing the last couple of weeks again. Then by the end of October... know what - I'll document my plan when I have it in front of me.
So I move along. There was an e-mail message sent to the TWer list I subscribe to. Cheryl told me I could quote her so here we go. First, she sent this message to the list:
-----Original Message-----
From: Cheryl
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 11:11 AM
I work in software doing technical writing and support. I crochet as a hobby. I would like to explore extending my techcomm skills to tech editing in the crochet world for publishers, manufacturers and designers. Ideally it would make possible a dream job that would keep me working and loving it (more than I do now) way past retirement age. Has anyone on the list flirted with combining a hobby with their career?
Any pointers?
Cheryl
So I wrote back:
----- Original Message -----
From: Me
To: Her
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 4:25 PM
I combine my music hobby with writing. I've been writing music reviews forhttp://www.dailyvault.com/reviewers.php5?id=9 for over a decade. I used to get paid $20/column for a site that doesn't exist anymore.
Nowadays, I am "paid" by passes to concerts. I received two passes for a $35concert last Tuesday, I have two passes to a concert on 10/6 coming and I'm hoping to secure two more passes to a concert in Moline, IL, on 11/8
I also receive promo CDs in the mail weekly and if you figure $15/CD, I makea pretty good monthly gig!
I find that my review writing has crossed over into my tech writing and the conciseness I use in my TWing has crossed over into my review writing. I don't think writing about your passion has anything but good results.
To which Cheryl wrote back:
-----Original Message-----
From: Cheryl Wallace
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 9:52 AM
To: Paul
... you are officially The Man. And you have great taste in music. :) Thanks for the only upbeat opinion that acknowledges that passion feeds the soul and it worthwhile even if it won't necessarily feed the body. In a perfect world, you'd be following Metalllica on tour writing reviews for shows in every city and I'd be on staff at a yarn maufacturer taking full advantage of a substantial employee discount!.
You play the cards you're dealt.
PS. I'm off to find the Hayseed Dixie Kiss tribute.
Cheryl
Youtube is awesome:
I helped Megan study her 44 vocabulary words that she got today for her test tomorrow. 44 words in a single night is a lot. One of her words was "sedated" which, music man here, said, "Oh! 'I Wanna Be Sedated!'"
"Huh?" replied Megan.
"The song is about being calm, which is the opposite of rock and roll. It's a great song."
So she finally could remember the meaning and, for that, I rewarded her by letting her watch this:
Which then led me to Sugarcult:
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