Pondering My Electronic Presence

Over the last few years, I've tried to push an electronic presence.  I've pushed on many fronts, but had few successes.  So what is the problem? Here are a few theories-

• Polish.  Because of limited time and general web dev burnout, I've been lazy in my personal projects from really giving them a nice facing.  I need to review all my "surface area" on the web, delete some of it, and add some bling to it all to make it look professional.  Example, this blog...it is using a default template from blogger.  That will hardly wow people.  Some of my postings are done in an emotional moment or after only getting 4 hours of sleep for a few consecutive nights.  They come off sometimes crazy or sometimes written by an ESL (English as a Second Language) student.  I need to care more about my editing.  Update: I made about 15 edits to this since my initial posting. I have to force myself to read through what I write before making it public. I'm sure there are a few more that I didn't catch.   
• I Suck. One of the reasons I didn't worry to much about my polish is because I figured my content was so engaging that I wouldn't need it.  *Slap to the face*. Not true.  I think at one point on Twitter for a brief period people thought I was "somebody".  The geopoliticos saw some of my links and analysis, initially liked what they saw, but then I would post a few conspiracy theory links and I would lose them.  The alt media crowd liked some of my critiques of those in power but disagreed with many of my ideological stances so I lost many of them.  My podcast and internet live streaming radio shows had interesting topics but often times I was too disorganized and long winded to make wading through the entire length of the shows to get the good nuggets of information worth it. Ultimately maybe I'm just a lot less interesting than I think I am.  Don't get me wrong, I'm slightly narcissistic but I also generally don't have too much of an inflated ego.  I just figured since I find the content that I'm interested in and my analysis of things so compelling I thought everyone else would too! Ok, maybe I was a little bit more narcissistic than I thought (by the way if you listen to my podcast you have probably figured out that I really like that word, narcissistic).  But in general my efforts weren't about me they were about the information. Maybe too much of me got in the way, and maybe the information isn't as relevant or as interesting to as many people as I thought it would be. Maybe my grasp of what I push on social media and in blogs isn't all that intellectually compelling and is thus just lost in the noise.
• Lack of a Tribe: I'm a conservative, but I don't like big business and transnational corporations.  I agree with many liberal critiques of economics and society but I think their moral stances are detrimental and I think many of them (not all) are deliberately dishonest with everyone except like minded people what their true political aims are.  Progress, forward, change...to what? I like libertarian's stands on limited government but sometimes I show some slight neocon leadings and a generally conservative world view that puts them off.  The esoteric types love some of the information I put out, until they run across that I'm a born again believe in Jesus.  Jesus as God and His death on the cross as the only atonement for man's sins is at odds with many esoteric interpretations of the Bible.  In short, my audience is scattered and divided.  I can ignore my true feelings on things and shape my post to appeal to one or more of these audiences more, but I feel I would be being dishonest to myself and to them by doing so.  
• Harder than it Looks: In an era of a billion online voices making my various efforts stand out is hard.  I think for each endeavor it might take reaching a certain momentum and then carefully maintaining and expanding that momentum in order to be successful.  Getting to that level of initial momentum perhaps is harder now in 2014 then it was in the early 2000's.  The competition for people's attention spans is fierce. 

There have been some (limited) successes.  Here is a highlight of a few-

• Tech Blog: My much neglected tech blog still gets a decent amount of hits.  Some of my post have gained close to 3000 hits.  Not great, but a start.
• Esoteric Blog: I had a blog that posted esoteric videos under one of my various guises.  The blog didn't get many hits, but the blog filled a decent niche.  I had a very high click through rate even though the total hits were small, and each "click" was a high value one.  Revising that blog is possibility.
• Associated Content: My grammar was horrible but before yahoo made the change from Associated Content to Yahoo Voices I had some decent hits on some of the political articles I wrote. I made some money, not a lot but more than any of my other for profit areas. I fumbled the ball in the transition and they have sense tightened up what they accept as post.  I could do a push here again.

Some of the Biggest Failures

• Funny Video Blog(s): I was on a kick briefly to not do any web development but instead focus on existing free tools to post content that I thought would bring in some hits and generate ad revenue.  I would just go out and search for funny videos and post them on a blog and magically think this would attract attention.  I even had a Portuguese version of the blog and a Portuguese Twitter account to try to drive traffic to it.  Again due to lack of polish and competing against some very established sites that did the same thing resulted few hits. I pulled the plug on this project after a few months.
• Facebook Pages: A lot of entrepreneurs invested time and effort into establishing presences on Facebook.  I don't blame them.  I did.  And I still think in some ways doing so is relevant, if for nothing else for brand protection.  First people just made normal Facebook accounts that were business rather than people specific.  Facebook for the most part squashed this and encouraged people to use Facebook "pages" instead.  That worked. But then Facebook has been inconsistently changing the algorithms for how post to a Facebook page show up on one of the subscriber's timelines.  Initially Facebook pages were a good investment of time, effort, and maybe a little money.  Now I'd say they are for the most part worthless.  Groups work differently and might be worth investing time in, but who knows what Facebook is going to do next?  In some ways I don't blame Facebook for the changes.  They have to make money somehow.  But I think they have swung to far in the pay to play direction too quickly.  It is like they held off for a long time (smart) but then came in swinging too fast.  If you are a big brand with advertising money to burn go for it.  For small entrepreneurs get a Facebook presence or keep existing ones, but I wouldn't waste a lot of time on supporting them. The payoff isn't there anymore. 
• Most of My YouTube Channel: I do a lot of podcast using Spreaker. I get on OK amount of listens but nothing that will propel any kind of effort to monetize them, and that is fine. I do them to talk about what I think is important but if I could do some unobtrusive monetization and get away with it I would.  I need to disconnect Spreaker from my YouTube channel and ditch most of my other existing videos.  I tried doing a daily and weekly news recap, but I was just using screen-o-matic. That with my monotonous voice wasn't compelling enough.  I did have some success early on doing video recaps of book reviews of all things. I will do those again.

So how can I do better? Or should I do better?  Where should I push Next? Here are some initial high level thoughts-

• Go Hard or Go Home:  There is no point in putting stuff out on the web that is of low quality and unpolished. I still believe content is a greater driver than polish (look at the Drudge Report), but coming in as a noobie I think polish is a must.  
• Sleep Management: I don't get enough sleep, ever.  Part of this is due to medical reasons, most of it is due to poor time management.  I'm a nighthawk by nature.  At night the pets are calmed down, everyone from work is offline, and my wife is either working or sleeping.  There is just me and my racing mind.  I love it, but most of the stuff I'm doing at night in this free time is goofing off.  I've got to get to bed and leave space for 8 hours of sleep. If my issues keep me up they keep me up, but at least I'll be getting some limited rest during that period, which is important.
• Hitting the Ground Running / Getting Up Early: I'll tell you a secret. I love getting up early.  It is quiet. I enjoy seeing the sun come up.  As long as it isn't mega cold out I like the cold air hitting me in the face and jolting me awake.  It is almost as good as coffee.  I'll tell you another secret.  I like staying up until the sun is almost up from the night previous even more :)  I can't do both.  If I want to be productive, what is it they say? The early bird gets the worm.  Ideally I would be up at five and working by six.  That is the target.  It will take me awhile to get there but when I do I think I could knock out my work responsibilities before I'm even mostly a wake and somehow free up more time for extra projects in the early evening.
• Get Back in Shape: At one point in life I was an athlete, like a legit college one.  I weight lifted, ran, trained in a few different martial arts styles, and was in general a bad arse.  But now you can count the number of years I've been in IT by the number of 10 lb rings around my gut.  Getting back into shape is so depressing for me because I have to acknowledge both just how far I've let myself go and how that I will never, ever, again be what I was.  This is probably a struggle most men who are aging face but it probably hits former athletes a little harder. Regardless, if I'm going to bring my A game in life I need to be in at least B- shape.  I'd say now I'm close to a D-.  I'm taking the first initial steps and getting back into shape.  I've found that literally my bones hurt when I do from past bodily abuses that I didn't even know about so it is a little harder going then I thought it would be. I just have to be careful and take very small baby steps. But I think getting slowly in shape over the next few years will have many mental benefits.  I'm sure my wife (and future children...fingers crossed) will appreciate having a more healthy spouse and father.  
• Putting God First: Even describing a relationship with Jesus like this makes me cringe a little.  I want to be Jesus's friend.  I want to know Him better.  This is why I exist.  I'll keep things short here because I know maybe the two or three people who read this might not be Christians.  I'll just say that Jesus is the most important person in my life.  But I often put praying, reading the Bible, and spending time with Christ on the back burner.  It is a giant dichotomy in my life that needs to be rectified.  I believe Jesus created me, he knows what I'm capable of, he knows what I'll actually do.  In pondering where to push next being close to God's side so he can direct my pushes is, how shall we say this, wise?  No matter what I do in life I want Jesus first.  I'm not trying to do this so God will be on the same page as me, but so that I will be on the same page as Jesus...if you aren't a Christian this will sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but if you are a born again believe you will get this.  No rituals, just me coming to a God daily because I want to, and in the process being transformed into something on my own I could never hope to become...and that not for myself but for God's glory.  He might take me a different direction that the schemes I've got going on currently in my head.  I'm cool with that, as His plans are better.
• Time Management and Separation of Concerns: My life right now is a tangled web of chaos. My sleep schedule is jacked, my working hours are starting to get erratic, and my productivity in all areas is lower than it could me.  I need to WORK when I'm working, and work a consistent schedule. I need to take my job much more seriously than I am.  I've a bit burned out on what I'm doing. I work with the coolest group of guys I've ever worked with, I get paid well.  I need to get over my boredom and step up and give them more value than I am.  If that means shutting down some of my other projects on the side and killing much of my social media presence, so be it.  I also need to have a schedule.  I won't like having one. My wife's doesn't have a regular work schedule and often works nights.  This isn't helpful to me though it is on me to deal.  Despite all distractions, I need to lay down some anchors.  I go to bed at this time. I work at this time. I only do social media for this amount of time and only between these times.  I have this amount of time to explore pushing into other areas on the internet and if I don't do it between these times too bad, move on.   My wife and I aren't in our 20ies anymore, time to be less spontaneous (which often results in us sitting near each other but not doing anything really all that exciting...want to see a movie? Ok...oh that one is a 9?...we just missed it...opps to late to eat at that one place, let's just order a Pizza and sit next to each other me on Twitter her on Facebook...lame).  I need to spend more quality time with my wife and friends rather than just time (time is better than nothing but quality time if I can muster it is much preferred).  And that will require not only planning (easy) but sticking to the planning (hard).  Quality time goes a lot farther than just being around and will free up time for me to spend in other areas.  I should have mastered all this a long time ago, I kinda did in the past but lately I've degraded.  Time to step up.  I need to realistically look at all my commitments, factor in for some laziness, and figure out when and how much time I can spend trying to push some successful endeavors on the internet.  I have a feeling I will only be able to spend a third of the time I would think I need to in order to get some momentum going, but if I use my time wisely and with focus I can accomplish I bet more than I think I can. I hope so anyway. If not, I just retask.
• Knowledge in Depth Rather than in Width: With the internet at your finger tips anyone can can spend some time searching on a subject and gain a cursory level of knowledge.  So me doing any kind of web presence that shares information as a means to grow a presence, for profit or other altruistic reasons, unless it is in depth it will just be more noise.  Becoming a subject matter expert, a real one, takes diligence and study.  If I'm going to differentiate myself I've got to put in the time going DEEPER.  I'm a firm believer that in understanding the world many fail because they aren't multi-disciplined.  There is also a danger of become so deep in one area that you lose the broader big picture.  I see this all the time with people just viewing things from an economic, a national security, or esoteric / spiritual / prophetic points of view.  They can't take a step back from the lenses they have become accustomed to looking at the world through to examine the various facets of the gem of reality that single issue perspectives miss.  If I want to present myself as a subject matter expert on tech or geopolitics, I've got to get deeper into a lot of different areas than I am now.  I need to be both have knowledge and width, and the posh to present my knowledge well.  To be honest I expect some triaging here. With time constraints I won't be able to do it all or become as in depth on everything that I feel I should be.  How that will affect my plans and the directions I go I don't know, but I will never know until I start pushing the limits.
• Participate in Forums and Social Media More Under Various Guises: Forums are huge for driving traffic from what I've found.  I need to post more on forums.  And if I can answer questions I need to answer them on the forum but try to include links back to my various web presences where allowed.  Twitter is an OK driver of traffic, one that shouldn't be over looked but you have to keep in mind that sharing link backs on twitter is like hunting blind with a shotgun (bad analogy but it works).  You might have tons of followers but none of them will be on at the same time.  If you just shoot stuff out randomly too often you will spook people.  Twitter is all about interaction, giving and taking, sharing.  If you are there to just pump links there are a few areas where that might work, maybe with tech.  But Twitter is best when you are sharing info with no agenda other than the info itself, and for the few who see your info in their streams you interact with them.  The interaction takes a little bit of time investment so be aware of that.  For my political activities on Twitter I don't have any plans to blatantly monetize my followers, not why I'm there. I'm there to share info that I think is relevant and important.  But if in the process I occasionally link to some web presences of mine that have adds or paid links that are relevant, so be it.  And I will arrange those links and adds off to the side, I won't try to shove them in people's faces.  Just if interested, click here. Yeah I might make a dime, but this is a resource that I vetted and you might be interested in.  
• Weekly and Daily Planning:  There is a saying that no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy. I generally view planning for anything like this.  BUT planning forces you to at least have a direction, to marshal resources in advance, and to be thinking about how those resources are going to be spent.  So I plan to probably on Sunday unless busy to look at my week, and to figure out how I want to spend it.  My plans will be realistic and not that detailed, but they will at least be a vector. I know, almost all of you already do this, I really don't. It is costing me so I need to change this.
• Not Getting Stressed: I'd say in a lot of ways I'm so independent it is hard for me to get stressed. People come up to me and make demands, and I often ignore them to my future detriment.  Even though I do this, still in the back of my mind all these little task have been put on me circle in my subconscious.  And then to my surprise, I am a bit more grumpy, not relaxed, and start to stress.  A lot of times I'm not even sure what I'm stressing about, I just always feel like I need to be doing something, and that feeling is usually correct. I'm not into yuppie business books so much, but I was forced to read "Getting Things Done" a few years ago in my past job (company wide read).  It had some good principles. Take care of the little things right away, don't let them slide as they never really slide but occupy a place in your subconsciousness. If taking care of them is quick, invest the time as they come up and get rid of them fast. The bigger things that are disruptive that you aren't prepared to deal with or can't deal with them at the moment, put them aside and get back to them when time is freed up.  That is OK because in a sense by making this conscious decision to not handle something based on logic the subconscious won't hang on to these task so much.  I think putting these principles in place, as long as I don't mis-characterize small things as big things so I can punt them, will be very helpful in reducing a general subconscious stress level that sometimes haunts me without me even really knowing why. It will make me more productive too.  I also need to learn how to say no. Sometimes family and friends thrust things on my that I need to push back on.  My wife volunteered me as tech support for some of her friends, and I've got computers that need working that has been sitting unattended to for a long time. Every single freaking day I wake up and think about how I should be working on those computers but because it is a time heavy thing that I didn't really want to do in the first place those computers sit idle. Her friends are good people and I feel horrible about not getting to their computers but they still sit unattended. At this point I just might buy them new low end but better than what they have computers just so I can get this problem off my plate.  No more tech support. No more helping people move that wouldn't return the favor when I've got stuff that needs to get done. If I feel good about my productivity fine, I'll do it as a favor to God knowing I won't get paid back by the person helping. But no more dropping dinner off to my wife at work who is making it the norm rather than the exception (my wife just wants to see me, but doing this just kills my whole evening).  No. Walls up.  I'll still try to be helpful but I really feel that I need to get some online things going business wise online or elsewhere. I'm obsessing on it (notice the length of this post). I can't be focused with everyone sticking their fingers into the pot of what is my time. I'm going to have to be a little meaner which really isn't in my nature. It is something I'm looking forward learning though guiltily a little.."Hey I just moved and I set up my computer and it doesn't work." "Really? That sucks *click*".  I did that for the first time ever recently. It felt good but I still feel a little guilty about it. Sadly this is one obvious vector that I could push on for income...word of mouth computer repair. I've done it in the past and made decent money.  For some reason lately I have zero interest in doing it. I don't know why that is...maybe I'm just more aware of how many rocks with scorpions you could kick over just by touching someone else's computer.  I've done professional desktop support in the past and I've seen all sorts of strange stuff.  I'd hate to have a friend give me a computer that just by the act of trying to boot it into safe mode kills the hanging by a thread hard drive for good and my friend loses 15 years worth of data.  Maybe I'm a little too paranoid about that. I've also had friends bring over computers in the past that were a mess. I'm not being a phrasee here, but geeze guys how many porn popups can you infect on a computer before you cry uncle?  Apparently that number is very high judging by some of the computers I've been asked quietly, embarrassingly, to "fix" in the past. Most of the people I would be dealing with now are older family people so I expect would be still an occasional problem but nothing I cherish messing with. Maybe my thoughts will change on this.

Here are my initial push ideas-

• The Tech Blog: In order to share code snippets and insights that are valuable to the coding community I actually need to code a lot more and on a variety of different subjects than I am now.  At work I use older technology...good technology, but my insights on using it are appealing to a smaller amount of techies over time.  So I need to push myself in side projects using the latest and greatest.  I will be at a slight disadvantage here, as I've found that the problems you solve when you are doing personal development projects are often different than what paying clients want you to solve.  You really are shoved into the coda obscura sometimes by clients wanting you do things for them in situations that would never occur to you even existed...that is my experience anyway. And those weird situations are what coders hop on search engines to find out answers to.  I need to work around this and figure out how to get into the weirder stuff in my side projects.  Another limitation is that unfortunately for now I think I'm tied to blogger, where the few people who follow my tech blog expect my stuff to be. I worry changing platforms would risk losing what little momentum I have.  But, I can do a lot to polish up the look and feel of even a cruddy Blogger blog. I also need to decide on a consistent code markup plugin for sharing code and stick with it. I keep jumping around.  I also need to go back and review where I can upload full web projects for downloading.  Next up I need to purge and re-edit many post that are "duds" or off topic.  Lastly, I need to re-examine using Amazon Associates to embed links to relevant tech books and resources.  I think I could make some income off this blog, it will be modest because there are a lot of techies out there with a much greater passion and greater talents than I have in and for technology, but I'm confident I can still offer some value to the community and make a small amount of profit while doing it.  I also gain the added bonus of having another reason to push my boundaries as a web developer and a programmer which even if the blog doesn't pan out financially my expanded skill set might pay off in the future.
• Personal Programming Projects: I'm burned out a bit on programming. I gotta get over that.  Just doing the 9-5 coding supporting apps written in older technology isn't going to invigorate me.  I've got some great ideas for writing some programs that would be extremely useful to me.  I bet they would be extremely useful to others (though this might be the same mistake I've made with social media, but I won't know until I try).  I plan on turning some long thought about programming concepts into reality.  The polish part will be a challenge, as getting things to work for me is different than getting things to work for end users of various skill levels.  But polish here is one of the exceptions that I'll make.  It is better to get coding and get stuff out there for people to evaluate then to get too hung up on polish if it becomes indeed something that hangs me up. For Blogs polish is a must. For code I might be able to slide a little.  I plan to give my programs and access to web applications as donationware under the continual "this is betaware use at your own risk" disclaimer.  That might scare some but I hope the stuff is useful enough that people will still use it and expand on the stuff I post open source.  If some of the concepts catch I will invest more time in them, polish them up, and maybe offer them up as free versions with an optional fee to unlock some of the more advanced functions.
• Mobile Development:  I've dabbled with making websites mobile friendly but I need to actually get my feet wet with Android and iOS.  Maybe I can come up with a decent app concept. For the next six months I will mostly gaining competence of as mobile native code developer starting with Android, no firm plans on what to develop just yet.  
• The Esoteric Blog:  I don't know why I let this one go...One problem I noticed is that I need to post images that on click swap out with YouTube videos rather than embedding videos themselves on the blog.  Videos really cause lag when coming into the blog generally rather than on a specific post.  This blog is dormant enough so It that I can decide to push it to a different platform or customize it more.  I will revive the Twitter account I had with it and begin pushing content links on Twitter (as well as finding other's content to share).  I will limit myself in this...things that are blatantly anti-Christian I  will add commentary warning about how some of the content is "bad".  The blog won't be overtly Christian but will definitely come from a Christian world view.  Also and much of what I share will have bread crumbs back to Jesus for those who seek Him.  This might again cut down on my audience, but I've got my limits.
• Research: What do you freaks want?  And out of those wants what I can this freak provide to you that is within my capability to provide?  I've read a lot about the demographics that are driving things, baby boomers and the new "urban hustler" demographic.  I like the idea of coming up with a concept that I think might appeal to these and other demographics, investing some time and (limited) money into it, and then seeing if that concept gets any traction.  If yes I will invest more time in it, if not I will play with it a bit to see if maybe I'm just not doing something right but after a certain period of time I'll give up on the concept and move on to another.  Rinse and repeat.  I've already cut having a daily news link blog (though I might come back to it) and a funny video blog.  Those were baby steps.  I need to start pushing ideas. Domain names are like what $7 bucks a year now?  Web hosting is under $10 bucks for hosting unlimited sites? Yeah that is shared hosting and might suck at times, but it is good enough for concept testing.  I need to set aside a budget for testing out maybe one new concept a month ramping up to maybe 5 or so a month. Ideally it would be 30 a month but there is no way right now I could pull that off.  So I'll start with maintaining and expanding what I've got and slowly adding new ideas in the mix.  I've got some ideas but I'm going to keep them secret. I just need to figure out which one I want to try this month. Also I want to go as global as I can in my future offerings.  
• Automation and APIs: Putting in a lot of time on my news blog developing some code that semi automated taking select tweets each day and putting them into a blogger format not panning out was a small blow to me.  The blog itself looked like crud so maybe the polish factor came into play.  I also have a suspicion that part of the appeal of information sharing and gathering is the hunt for good content.  If someone just hands it to you there is no hunt and people will go back to where a hunt is required.  One way to explain the failure. Yet it is still something in my heart that I would like to do.  I need to have this fully automated though.  Something I don't even have to think about.  Taking my code base that I have now and turning into a service or something that is kicked off by a job on a web server is the next step.  Doing this means essentially the news site is out there with zero effort on my part.  If it makes next to nothing in ad revenue that is OK, as it only cost me a few cents in power a day to maintain it.  And if the blog makes a few bucks a year to cover that electricity cost, maybe even turning over a few lowly dollars in profit, I'm golden.  I want that news out there not to make money but to wake people up.  In the process I'm going to develop some automation know how so that I can apply this automation to other areas.  If I can hit a niche that is even a little bit popular and will find information presented, even if it is gathered and presented  by automated means compelling, it is a good thing. If I can find enough of these little niches I might be able to get some kind of significant revenue coming in. I don't expect much but for little effort (except for the initial development time) it might be worth it. I'll find out.
• My Own "Blog" Engine: I'm not going to give too many details here, but I see a need that isn't being filled. I don't think I'm that great of a web developer, but my database / back-end experience allows me to see how information could be aggregated in so many different ways that many outside the corporate IT world do not. I'm debating what technologies to build the thing with. In the spirit of getting things out the door I'll probably use what I know but I might come back and port it to other development stacks in the future.
• Adobe and Similar Open Source Programs Mastery: I'm paying for the full Adobe Creative Cloud for a while but not using it much.  I love Photoshop every time I make progress with it I put it aside and forget what I learned. The basics of image manipulation I've got down, but there is so much to learn.  Other Adobe products will allow me to take self publishing and video composition to the next level.  I can edit videos fine but I need to add in more bling to make them compelling.
• One More Push with Podcasting: I'm going to continue to do my podcast for a little while. I enjoy rambling but for the most part as far as hits my podcast are duds.  I hope to improve the quality of them.  I usually do them live so people can interact, but with my current audience the few that do listen generally listen to my stuff in the archives.  I will miss the opportunity for interaction while live, so I might do some limited live stuff.  But for now I need to get BETTER. If that means needing to do things offline where I can edit, redo, polish, add sound effects and such, so be it.  If by the end of the year I don't see any increase in hits I'll probably quit paying for Spreaker.  I really enjoyed doing my online streaming radio show on Blogtalkradio.com with my friend Michigan Bob.  A lot of times I was under prepared though. I think because I'd get the topic and the show notes together literally a few minutes before the show that Bob sometimes felt like he appeared dumb on the show because he was flying blind most of the time.  That and some personal issues caused him to have to drop out. We had a good run though.  There are still a few shows I'd still like to do, and will do them, but podcasting will take priority for now.
• Self Publishing:  I've got a trilogy of books that I want to write. The "libre esoterica" series.  The first book being a political science book that discusses some of the darker concepts of political science and how they intersect with human nature..  The second book will be an esoteric book exploring the "Fortean" side of the human experience, or at least what I know of it...where the conventional wisdom of what reality is meets occurrences that just don't fit that paradigm. Encounters with UFO's. "Magic". The Paranormal.  Conspiracy theories.  The first two books would be written from a politically and religiously agnostic point of view, though I would come out in the opening pages acknowledging that I am a Romans 10:9 believer in Jesus and my world view might give things a certain slant. But the books would be useful to all I'd hope. The last book in the trilogy would be all Christian.  It would (will hopefully) be a book taking the concepts presented in the first two books and how to deal with them from a Christian perspective.  Part spiritual warfare. Part evangelic. Part encouragement. Part crazy perhaps :) How to take it all in, if even you should take it all in, and how to serve Christ in a fallen world.  I've got a rough outline of the first book.  I've got some ideas for the second, the third is a mystery mostly other than the Biblical concepts that would be included. I doubt any of these are on the radar for this year, but I plan to firm up the first book concept and write sections of it as I'm inspired.  I also am a nerd and play role playing games sometimes.  Both table-top games and board games. I have some ideas for both types of games that could apply both to the web, mobile apps, and traditional paper / cardboard products.  I think the easiest vector for self publishing for me would be to focus on a rules lite post apocalyptic RPG.  The only thing that might stop me is the world is so flooded with RPG's right now...there are almost more game producers than consumers as far as table-top RPGs  I KNOW I could make a great game, it is just the question of is would be such a quantum leap better than existing efforts to justify tossing a new game into an already flooded game mix. As of today I'm not sure but just for fun I might give it a shot anyway.  I might instead focus on supplements for existing RPG systems.  I put out an post apocalyptic Christmas scenario last year that was well received.  I think if I can come up with concepts like that and flush them out there might be a market.  I know the demographic that buys RPGs is mostly older now.  They have raised their kids and now have the free time to game again and money to burn.  Something to explore. 
• Treating My Day Job As My Most Important Tech Project: Right now I'm pretty discouraged with my career. This is one reason why the long post about diving into side projects. It would be a huge mistake though to neglect my primary bread and butter day job (like I'm doing now).  I've had a rough week so I'm taking the time to clarify my thoughts. I will make up the time. But after today, to borrow a term from my father, "no more mickey mouse ****."  So far in other outside of 9-5 work my endeavors I think have yielded about five to ten bucks a month.  My day job pays many more times that.  If I treat my day job as my primary side project, and I was making that much income off of it, I would throw everything I had at it to make it even better and more profitable. I need to treat my 9-5 like my most profitable side project, as in a sense it is. I've made zero break thoughts anywhere else.  I think I've been getting some warnings from on high..."Get your act together, judge yourself and repent and get stuff done at work or else I will judge you." So the day job must take priority over all my side stuff.  I must have full separation of concerns and I must work both hard and smart for my employer in a way that provides the most value to them that I can and brings glory to God. I'm failing in that daily currently.  But Monday is, and must be, a new day.   

If you actually read all of this you are a trooper. I wrote it mostly for me to come back to.  Here is my initial strategy for fame and fortune on the interwebs.  I'm not really after fame. I'm out to lead people to Christ through my political and my conspiracy theory engagements, My other projects are meant to start a trickle of an additional revenue and to give me a purpose. Like I said above, these are my plans, they may not be God's. I just hope laziness doesn't play any role in not pursing the above.