the intersection of goodwill and profit

I find it incredibly hard to focus on profit-driven ventures. I mean, I can sit there and hammer things out for a little while, but lately I’ve found that my attention span for such things has grown shorter and shorter.

You’d think it would be easy to get up out of bed in the morning and go work on things that you know will be profitable. But then again, if it’s hard to focus on things like that, then perhaps that’s not really what your heart desires…

I’m not really sure what in the hell I desire at this point. All I know for sure is that I want to feel excited, and I want to see the public respond to things that I’ve created.

Without question, nothing has received a greater response than the free things that I’ve produced — most notably, my two WordPress themes. I truly enjoy helping people use the theme, and for some reason, I get this great sense of satisfaction when I improve the theme and solve user’s problems in the process.

One thing that’s really strange about all this, though, is the fact that if the themes weren’t distractions from my regular work, then I probably wouldn’t like them as much. Then again, perhaps I’m wrong on this.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I see that all of my actions of late point towards my more selfish character qualities. It sounds bad, and I guess it is.

I’d hate to think that I could be so selfish that I would actually shoot myself in the foot, but I can absolutely see how such a scenario is possible given my effed up frame of mind.

doing what’s right for you

I still haven’t found the sweet spot that is located at the intersection of goodwill and profit. I’ve found profit, but at the same time, I felt as though I wasn’t making anyone else’s life any better, and more than that, I didn’t feel as though I was really producing things that had lasting value.

On other occasions (and more recently), I’ve found goodwill. Problem is, wherever I’ve found goodwill, profit seems to be AWOL. Right now, I like goodwill better, but every time I look at my bank account, I think that perhaps I like profit better.

Really and truly, I just want both. And I want them both to exist at the same intersection.

More and more, it looks as though I’m going to have to put up with a bunch of stuff that I don’t like in order to get to that intersection. I’ll even go a step further and tell you that even the thought makes me sick, but that’s the way it is.

Why should I assume that I can accomplish my goals without toiling on a bunch of shit that I can’t stand? Why should my path be any easier than anybody else’s?

Why can’t I just fucking do it already?

maybe this is what they call a plateau

Just like an athelete tends to hit a plateau in training, perhaps I’ve hit a temporary plateau in my creative and professional life.

It may sound a little cheesy, but I seriously feel as though I’ve conquered stage one, and now I’m ready for stage two. Problem is, I’m just not quite sure what in the hell stage two is, exactly!

I think stage two probably contains more metrics and analysis than stage one did, as this actually harkens back to my college days and a time when numbers were king. For quite a few months now, numbers haven’t really mattered all that much, but now I think I’m at a point where I can take what I’ve learned and sell it/package it/promote it in such a way as to produce data — data worth analyzing.

It would be neat to see the different stages of my life from the past 8 years come together in a sort of business harmony.

I’m still not totally convinced that I’ll be thrilled by this, but what the hell…If it can buy me a couple more months’ time, then I suppose that’ll have to be good enough.

And hey, maybe somewhere along the way, I’ll find the intersection of goodwill and profit.

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