2010 Year in Review

I was planning on doing the @lasertron Radvent project more than I did, but after the first few I wasn't able to resonate with it anymore.  They involved things that didn't make sense to me.  Either making things, or interacting with people.  Christmas parties, neighbors, etc.  I didn't have any of these and I felt pretty lame.  So instead I figured i'd write this blog post about 2010. I wish I could say I have a lot of detailed things to talk about that happened in the past year, but I really don't.  It's been a year that has been focused on just a couple things, and It's been a year of removing anything that diluted the focus.

I guess I lost a lot of friends this past year.  I couldn't tell you exactly why.  Some I've purposely cut out as a way to get away from people and/or situations I find distracting or making me unhappy.  Others have quietly slipped away from my life, maybe citing the same reasons, who knows.  Though this year I found I need to step away from unhappiness due to the hands of others.  And I had a really awful Summer that involved some of that.  I even told my parents during a visit this year that they're not allowed to come back.  I'll stand by that.  I learned unhappiness due to guilt or association is stupid.

While I say I haven't done anything exciting this year, it's not entirely true.  I mean, I went to Seattle to visit the TechStars program for frack sake.  How cool is that?

I also was able to go to South By Southwest for the first time.  Something I've always wanted to do.  Just being in attendance and meeting people doing awesome things, and hearing people's ideas, and watching things in action is really a jump to anything you might be doing.  I'm really looking forward to SxSW 2011, hopefully bringing my own passion and ideas in tow.

I thought maybe this past year would have included me working on more music, but again, my passion and focus was elsewhere, so unfortunately a lot of the tunes I hoped to some day finish is again being pushed into the next year.  Maybe 2011 will see the completion of my mysterious album.  Though I am releasing tracks as they get finished, so I suppose I'll give myself a little credit there.  Plus I was able to finally put out the music video for "Got Skillz?" all these years later.  Something from 2006 finally online?  That's pretty cool.

Also being that I left West Corporation at the very end of last year, 2010 was also thus far the entirety of my freelance/consulting work.

For the most part, I can't complain. I've made some neat projects and really done my best. Though the output of the process has been a complete failure. As of this writing 55% of my invoiced total have not been paid. If you think that's an impressively high number...YES it's a high number. Some of it i've written off as "I'll never get it, so I'm not going to fight it any longer", and some of it I'm actively fighting. A lot of that number comes from clients "unable" to pay me due to their client not paying them in some shape or form. And this isn't just a single client, there's multiple. So I'm thinking it's just part of the game. Sometimes you luck out and get paid, sometimes you don't.  My advice if you're going into consulting work, only do it if you love it, because you'll be doing it for free most of the time.

So I don't know.  Do I have other things to wrap up from the year?  Probably.  I'm just doing this off the cuff.

I hope you're all having a great holiday season, and I hope to catch up with you all soon in the new year.