In This Episode

An update on ApexThis and the future.

Show Credits

ApexThis podcast is hosted, produced, mixed, edited & music by Mark.

Blogscript

Welcome to ApexThis.Podcast. A chronicle of my journey to start a publishing side business. This will be a behind the scenes look at what I’m doing to make that happen. I’ll share tips and best practices that I learn along the way. Tips that you can use to start your very own indie publishing journey and share your voice with the world.

Coming up…An update on ApexThis and the future.<music>

<Episode 3 Intro Clip>

Those words were spoken into my recorder in Dec 2016, and released to the world Jan 2017. A little over 3 years later, I am here to announce that I have stepped away from the Meetup I started. And here is why…

The Why

As you can tell, we are in a global pandemic, and still suffering it here in the US, there are important protests happening demanding change, millions have been laid off from work, and many may be put out of their homes due to the overwhelming lack of support for workers and small businesses. BUT, we are not a political podcast. The point is, this has called to my attention and brought forth some thoughts I’ve been surpressing. If you’ve been listening to this sparsely updated podcast, you can derive a theme, a lack of focus. And you would be right. Despite my want to focus on ApexThis and my writing, I’ve never been able to truly do so and that is because I started too much, too soon. When I decided to focus on writing, I decided to ALSO start a Meetup and when the Meetup grew with real live people, I gave focus to that. Eventually, podcast episodes would fall out, videos, and writing would die off and I would focus on planning meetups, talks, 1/1’s, etc. More and more it was removing me from my focus. A focus that was lost when I started the Meetup.With Covid, my anxiety increased, and I started to really rethink my projects and what I wanted out of life.

Focus Realignment

2019 saw a big change in how I worked given that I was coming out of a burnout. I prioritized more self-care days and shrank my “work hours” so that I wasn’t running 100% everyday. The workload didn’t go away and instead increased.

I re-read Atomic Habits by James Clear, I read Getting Things Done, by David Allen as well as many other productivity books and I changed from focusing on goals, to focusing on process. While I had a goal to write and many writing projects, my process in writing was non-existent. I asked myself “If I were to write more, what would I need to leave behind?”

With that question in mind, I came across a blog from Julian Shapiro, founder of Demand Curve and writer. He has several guides and blog pieces that he wrote and one was entitled “What to work on.” In this, he broke down his analysis of finding out what interests or excites him and what he values from his projects. In his writing this line stood out to me:

Determine which path you’d be more regretful not having pursued by the time you’re 80 and are reflecting on your life choices.

And so I asked myself a few questions:

What would I regret not pursuing when I am 80? Writing & Publishing.

What am I doing to not have this regret? Nothing.

If I were to focus on writing & publishing, would I have time for anything else? No.