This is nerve-wracking to write but if I don’t put this out there I’ll probably stop updating this blog. Hopefully this is a worthwhile exercise. I’m scared and feel like a fraud. I know I’m qualified to do this work, but what if I fuck it up? What if this thing I’m good at and always working to improve won’t pay the bills?

Will I at some point walk away from this like I did with travel writing and creating travel videos? I’d like to answer no, but I’m going to settle for a big, fat maybe. If you look through the short archive for this blog, you’ll see that I had plans but they got tossed to the side when I got a full-time job which offers payment now instead of payment maybe sometime in the future.

At a comics panel at Boston Comic Con a few years ago the lovely George O’Connor said that professionalism is showing up everyday for three to five years without any big results. However if I show up for a month straight, I’d like to at least feel like I’ve made progress. When that doesn’t happen, I stop showing up. Through the exquisite combination of impatience and fear, I’ll turn my attention to a different creative venture (or something potentially safer).

One way I shoot myself in the foot is by planning these wonderful ideas without any kind of time budget to get the work done to my standards. I love planning like Liz Lemon loves office supplies. It’s sexy and intoxicating–all that potential. So I’m not letting myself get drunk on big, sexy plans. At least not for a while, because I’ve already made some. At least not until I can make posting here a habit. Which I’ve failed to do.

This week I had the opportunity to make a big, sexy plan by pledging money on Indiegogo for a Phree. I’ve wanted one of these since before I had the money to pre-order one. I still want it.

The Phree is a pen that allows you to write on any smoothish surface and the writing will show up via Bluetooth on the device of your choosing. I write almost every rough draft (including this blog post) in pen and paper in a notebook first. Second drafts typically go into Evernote. Third and subsequent drafts go into the correct application (Scrivener or Ecto) until I’m ready to publish it.

I decided not to pledge money at this point for two reasons:

1. I cannot promise myself that I will show up in a way that matters when this product is released.
2. If all goes well, I’ll be able to buy one at full price this fall.

Plus before the big, sexy rule came into effect, I made several with pledges to different Kickstarter campaigns and promises here on this blog. So I’ll likely be busy showing up at least until the end of the year.