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February 3, 2007

Hanging Up The Stethoscope

I'm a sucker for New Year's resolutions. This is, I imagine, because they appeal so directly to two big parts of my personality: a compulsive need for organization/planning, and an overly-developed drive for achievement. I find a good set of resolutions to be a fresh start, a clean sheet of paper, a way of setting out the path I want to walk for the next 12 months, Crafting resolutions has been, for me, a great way to pause, think about the future, and picture where I want to go.

So toward the end of December, I carved out a couple of evenings to sit down and think - hard - about what I wanted to do in 2007. Historically, my goal-setting has been laughably ambitious, if not outright contradictory ("I'll run a marathon, cure cancer, and make more time for my family!"). I actually got a little embarrassed when I saw how crazy/silly I'd been in previous years.

This year, I decided, was going to be different. Rather than simply rattle off a laundry list of "stuff to do", I tried to think carefully about my values, my life, and the context of things going on around me. Once I'd figured out what was important (as opposed to "interesting" or "nice to have"), I then forced myself to make a list (short, no more than seven items) of what I was going to do in 2007 to ensure my important stuff is being tended to.

Health is a good example. There's a reason the phrase, "if you don't have your health, you don't have anything" is a cliche: it's true. Trouble is, health is like a long-suffering spouse, taking your quiet neglect until the breaking point. At that point, it'll slap you silly.

So staying healthy had to be on my list. In years past my goal-oriented self would have crafted a resolution like, "run a marathon" or "run Greenlake 3 times in an hour." But sexy as those are, goals-wise, (i.e., fun to mention at cocktail parties) neither of those are actually good things to prioritize if you're focused on health. As it turns out, it's much better to clean up your diet, stay limber, and get 20 minutes of cardio 3 times a week. So, for this year, I'm doing 2.5-mile neighborhood runs at a comfortable speed instead of a 26.2-mile "goal." I'm eating more fruits and veggies. And Elaine and I are taking beginner yoga, starting this month.

I don't plan to walk through my entire list of goals in this post (I may be narcissistic, but I'm not that narcissistic), but I did want to mention that there's been at least one casualty of this prioritization exercise.

As of 2007, I've decided to end my "Web Doctor" column for the Puget Sound Business Journal.

This was a hard decision for me in a lot of ways. I've been writing for the PSBJ since early 2000, after starting in its short-lived sister publication, the Eastside Business Journal in 1999. That's seven years of print work, on a schedule that's ranged from biweekly to quarterly. (Whoa.)

"Web Doctor" was a lucky thing for me. I love writing, and the column gave me a great vehicle to talk about two personal passions: small businesses and the Internet. Everything started innocently enough: the editor of the EBJ, Pat McCarrell, was a colleague I'd met in Bellingham. He needed a tech columnist for his fledgling paper, had seen my writing before (I wrote a column called "Net Roamer" for our subscribers at Pacific Rim Network), and wanted to know if I was interested.

You bet I was.

I wrote for the EBJ for a while, my stuff got syndicated into the PSBJ in 2000, and they asked me to stay on when the EBJ folded. And that, as they say, was that; I've been cranking out columns (admittedly, some better than others) ever since.

But times change, priorities change, and, when I sat down and was brutally honest with myself, it was one of those things I was prepared to give up to make time for other things I want to focus on. In a strange twist, the forcing function revolved around doing more with the column - I've been hard at work on turning "Web Doctor" into a how-to book for small businesses that are new to the Internet. After finishing the proposal/market analysis/table of contents, I took a moment, stared down the long, long road of a year's time to write, market and sell the thing ... and realized I didn't love it as much as I thought.

Hey, it's 2007, and life is short. Do what you love.

Blogging is still very much a priority to me, so fear not, dear reader. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of slicing up some of the topics from my book and doing long-form posts on them as time allows. We'll see. For today, though, I'm hanging up the stethoscope, and calling it quits.

(And, Pat: thanks for the break, back in the day.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer at February 3, 2007 6:49 PM. Posted to Web Doctor.

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