“Jack of all trades, master of none” is a figure of speech used in reference to a generalist: a person that is competent with many skills but is not outstanding in any particular one.
Wikipedia
Is that an insult, or a compliment? A person can be good at many things, and be a person who is respected, with a large tribe of people who will turn to her with questions and know that she will have a solution.
And a person can be good at many things, but when a job needs to get done, they may never be the one who is called. After all, would you hire someone who only changes their own oil to repair your timing belt?
I am good at many things, but I can’t be excellent at all of them at once. It requires time and effort to stay on top of the game. I can excel at work and write a great blog, but I can’t also create an amazing website template or keep up on my Squidoo lenses. I could possibly do all of those things and be an absentee parent, but that really isn’t an option. You understand.
My attention can’t always be in one direction. It needs to wander, to take care of different tasks. To be the best I can at what I need to focus on now, so later I can be the best at something else.
A jack of all trades? I think not. But I will master some.
I just accomplished a little hurdle today on my journey to establish my new “secret” project! It seems like a little thing, but getting those post office box keys felt like a major achievement. Especially because I don’t yet have any mail to come to that post office box – it’s like a little reminder that now I’ve shelled out a bit more precious money, so I can’t give up. I need to keep plugging forward.
You see, I’m going to (finally) start my own business. (Go me!) It may not be a huge earner, and it may not turn a big profit for a while. It may never turn a big profit. But I’m very excited about it, and I can’t wait to get my first client.
I’ve even got plans for that. I may have to beg, and I will probably have to give out quite a few freebies. For this particular endeavor, I had thought to drop off at businesses, but I have a feeling I may have more luck at libraries. And perhaps bookstores – I’ve always thought that if I had my own business I would be sticking my business cards in relevant books at bookstores. Can you get in trouble for that? Maybe not if I ask the manager. Or maybe that would flag.
Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. I read that once.
Or used bookstores.
Well, anyway! Victory for Nicki! Yay!
So I’ve been hopelessly behind on work projects, and I was even in the process of writing a post about how I don’t like designing websites anymore, when I got started on one of said work projects and pretty much smoked through all but the last 1/2 hour of polishing in the last 2 hours.
I’m supposed to be in bed right now, and surely my husband is worried. (It’s 12:30 a.m. as I write this, and I have to go to work tomorrow.) But was it worth it?
When the project is completed by the other party, I will have earned enough money to pay for 3 months of Internet.
I have gained some motivation, as the project wasn’t as difficult as I had been fearing – which is what kept me from working on it these past two months.
My butt is sore from sitting for so long in the same position.
I’m not completely finished, and I may not be able to get back to the project for the next 24-72 hours.
I think it was worth it.
I’ve been more interested lately in my Wii (Wii Fit Plus and Animal Crossing: City Folk) and my book (Girls of Riyadh) than I have been in making connections between life and interesting reading material to make a post here. I sort of feel like my frantic busyness at work is washing over to home. I feel unstructured. Like Jell-O without a mold.
I just decided to make a list of things I feel I must get done now. And you know, I could only thing of one thing.
I need to make more money.
That’s it, that’s all I could think of. I don’t need to clean the house – I can push that on the weekend for the worst areas. I don’t need to spend more time with the kids – I already spend as much time as I can, and I won’t take away from it. I don’t have to read more, tidy up, organize, or anything else. Right now, money is my priority.
“But money doesn’t buy happiness!” My mind threw that one out as I thought about what other people may be thinking right now, which is really what I’m probably thinking without wanting to admit it. Sure, money doesn’t buy happiness, but money does fix the leaky bathtub. Money does pay for the Internet, daycare, and saving up for an emergency. More incoming funds do those things, and allow me to stress less about where the money will come from.
I will earn $100 in February.
Right now I honestly don’t know how that’s going to happen. $100 is a lot. I’m not going to put any extra funds into this little adventure – I’m going to do online things that don’t cost anything. If I earn money and decide to spend that cash trying to earn more, I think that’s okay.
There’s a goal. It feels like a big goal. If I meet it early, I’ll raise the stakes.
The plan for tomorrow:
- Squidoo – I wrote a list of ideas for lenses. I’m going to pull pictures and sketch modules for one tomorrow.
- mTurk – I earned a whopping $11 over 3 months, then gave up. Maybe if I give it a half-hour a night, I could rack up $20.
- I’m going to see if there’s anything that will fetch a price on eBay. I can get the buyer to pay for shipping, so it doesn’t really count as outgoing money.
Here we go.
The kids and I just watched the second Night in the Museum movie – I liked The Thinker.
Recently (two nights ago – very recently) my husband, who regularly goes to bed before I do because it takes him 4x as long as long to fall asleep, asked if I would be staying up late on his way to bed. I replied that I hadn’t really thought about it, and proceeded to work and plan (I’ll be honest – mostly play) for the next four hours, not getting to bed until 12:30 a.m. the next morning.
What was my problem, you may ask?
I didn’t think about it.
I know from experience that when I spend 15 minutes or so – sometimes even less – thinking about what I want to get done at work or with the kids, my success rate and how I feel about my day is a lot higher than when I just “let things go”.
Maybe it’s all in my head. Seeing things checked off on a list does give a person a certain sense of accomplishment. Maybe I’m accomplishing the exact same amount of stuff in a night when I just goof off for hours as opposed to nights like last night, when I made a list of six items and accomplished five, all before midnight (mostly).
But even if it is just an illusion, I think I like it. As I write this, it’s about 14 minutes to midnight. I think I’ll polish this up, then spend five minutes thinking about tomorrow.
