One Month

I haven’t posted in a little over a month. I’ve been telling myself that my first new post wouldn’t be a narcissistic navel-gazer about why I haven’t posted — that I would instead just get back to the business of writing posts about real things, starting where I left off as if there were no big missing gap. I figured I would resume by gradually talking about all the stuff that’s happened in the last 4 weeks, one day at a time, starting with something awesome.

But upon reflection I realized that it would be best to just do it all in one post, to just list all the stuff that’s happened in this one month of my life. By writing about a dozen things at once I won’t have to pick which thing should be the first thing I write about, and that’s a big releif for me: The decision regarding my first new post is no small matter. As many procrastinators know, the longer you wait to deliver something, the more you think will be expected of you. It’s a sad, vicious circle: the longer you delay, the more work you think you need to do to compensate for the absence, and thus the longer your delay will be.

The funny thing is that I thought the list would be short, but as I started listing them I noticed that, hey, I did accomplish something after all:

• Did a lot of running in the early mornings and on weekends: I’m up to about 19 miles per week.
• Finished building my lovely wife Peggy’s professional web site: tinydiva.com
• Went to Thanksgiving dinner with Peggy’s family in Northern Virginia.
• Went to a close friend’s memorial service and really lost it.
• Visited a couple of good friends whom we haven’t hung out with in a long time — something we really will do more of.
• Marked Behavior‘s 5-year anniversary!
• We launched a humongous e-commerce web site that has been essentially my primary project for most of the last year.
• Got closer to launching an amazing new cable TV network web site — should be any day now!
• Did some important new business development, helping to win two major and exciting new clients in Washington, D.C.
• Learned that I’ve been selected to run a panel at an upcoming web conference!
• Read one business book, one sci-fi novel, and two interaction design books.
• Did some long-delayed major household projects.
• Lost my sketchbook (I think).
• Kicked off a major new personal project for this site, but then put it on hold while I did all of the other stuff listed above.

And to top it all off, apparently I am Time Magazine’s Person of the Year!