Idlemind - nickcoster.com

It is the New Year again, and I still feel the need to write but have a crappy resolve to get the keyboard moving at my fingertips. I have been doing a bit more free writing where I just open up my ‘brainvalve’ and try and allow the fingers to keep up. I haven’t done a lot of follow up to see what the results of that undirected blather have been.
It is looking like a very busy year where my commitment to output is going to be tested. There is too much thinking and not enough output and with out put the thinking may as well not have happened.
So Happy 2010!

Walking down Martin Place in Sydney every day it is easy to feel like a scrooge as I turn away a host of charity workers asking for money, or a credit card number to help them support their chosen cause.

In the mean time Seth Godin raved about a micro loan project where instead of donating money to a cause that is (at least to me) quite faceless, i loan money to an individual investor to help them achieve a particular goal.

And then they pay it back, which gives me the opportunity to give again later with the same money. So I am going to pledge here that I will invest USD$50 a month to this process.

While it doesn’t payback any interest there is a different kind of return. A human return. I will get to hear how the loan has effected the lives and the family who has less than me but is doing something about it. Now that I am a father, thinking about the future of the world and setting an example in it feels rather important.

I think that this is a great idea and the longer I contribute the more value I will be able to add over time.

Imagine what $700Billion might have done for these sort of people…

It may be obvious but when it is hard to write, then writing can be very hard to do. Writing has it’s own momentum that can take a while to get rolling effectively.

The question that I need to aswer is not how to write more effectively, but how to start faster and then keep the focus on the target.

Start faster… I’ll ponder that as i finally sleep tonight.

I have been able to postpone this day for over 12 years, but finally the time has come. We are moving out of our safe and cosy home in cammeray to set up for the next phase of our life in the heart of the city.

From our new apartment we will be able to amble into our office in the city in just 10 minutes. We have free parking in the city! As well a gym and a swimming pool. All this comes at a cost though so there will need to be some careful budgeting ahead.

Of course the catalyst for all of this is the news of little Jack. We need a nice safe place to bring him into the world. The initial plan had been to buy a 3 bedroom place that we could be comfortable in. Unfortunately there are a lot more adventures going on in our lives that just the arrival of our first baby. I had previously referred to our business as our baby if any one asked when we were planning to start a family. Well the business is approching it’s fourth year in operation and things are gaining momentum which is very exciting but it takes a hell of a lot of effort to keep everything running smoothly.

To help keep it running smoothly, when Jack arrives in October we will be nice and close to the office, such that it is effectively an additional office space. Either of us will be able to dash back and forth from home to office, which is something that we just couldn’t do from any other suburb in Sydney. Not even our beloved Cammeray.

So tomorrow will be our last full day here. I am now really excited to be on the move since everything in the place is all packed into boxes.

Another month is rolling by. I feel like we haven’t had a chance to catch breath since Christmas and even that felt more like work than a holiday. Every day rolls into the next one and there is just no relief on the horizon.

On one hand this is really good news since it means that business is busy, but the flip side of that is that it is hard to find time for ourselves. This is really going to become more important very soon.