Things are Coming Together

Lately I’ve been trying to make the seemingly disparate things I care about and work on all relate to each other, overlapping and reinforcing, with an eye toward fusing into some new thing that is the thing I do.
This is a like a year’s long chess game, often involving difficult decisions, which means letting go of desirable alternatives. As with anything, fortunately, “use makes master” – you get better by doing. Doing my last book filled a gap in my schedule and enabled me to brush up on exactly the kind of software (Dreamweaver) I was looking for to manage and organize my web projects.
Similarly, learning more about Apache, perl, PHP, awstats, etc., this summer I’ve begun to get more familiarity with running my own server and not just relying on friend/sysadmin to do things for me like a black box.
(On the other hand, trying to add virtual hosts to httpd.conf I somehow made an invalid file that apache refuses to restart with *and* lost my backup of the old, working configuration – which freezes my ability to go live with radiofreeblogistan.com, etc.)
Likewise, the new blog I’ve been doing since July has served several functions:
* A new organizational take on my daily writing, with an obsession on the blog phenomenon.
* A way to promote my latest book but more importantly stay involved in the dreamweaver/macromedia world by publishing news and info about dreamweaver and build a community of return readers around the book, its website, future editions, and other news from me.
* An attempt to systematically cover blog related developments and memeflourescences, and potentially build a flow of coverage that might itself feed into a book project or other future paying writing jobs.
Three birds for the price of one stone.
Speaking of which, the cat is locked in the house now, as B saw a deformed bird on our back walk. I didn’t see it when I went out back just now and I’m relieved. How sad nature makes me sometimes.