I can’t believe it has been just over 10 months since I quit the full-time job to pursue this crazy so-called writing life.  What I can’t believe more than that is that I am almost making it.

Almost is the keyword there though.  I am really hoping to not have to get another part time job to make ends meet and am able to seriously focus on my writing.  But a whole month of travels and with very little work has left my savings in some sad shape.

But on the plus side a month of travels and very little work and Internet time has left me utterly stoked and totally refreshed.

I had planned on launching my new travel blog a month ago but I couldn’t for the life of me come up with the perfect name for it.  I was seriously obsessed with the name – it was driving me freaking mad.  And then I was writing this post and it just came to me – just like that.  Oh the stokage flowath forward!

Domain name available – sweet!  And then when I didn’t think things could get any better I glanced at my e-mail and a new message caught my eye.  An editor of a local mag approaching me with a story idea – for serious?

The world is conspiring with me tonight and I hope so for y’all too!

Truth be told, I am not a planner.   I am like the anti-planner.  I plan to not plan but then think that I am planning so I scrap the plan and go with no plan.  You follow?

Well a few days ago I committed to creating an iPhone guide for a few of Utah’s lovely National Parks.  Super excited for a project like this but totally screwed since I am getting ready to take off for nearly the entire summer.  I am heading to the Midwest for half of May and then I return to Salt Lake City for a week before heading off to Hawaii for a month via a weekend in Portland.

Long story short, I need to either learn to plan or drown.

Tomorrow or the next day I need to speed down south and hike every single trail in two national parks.  Well not every single trail… I already know these places well.  I’ve got a list of sights I need to photograph, restaurants I need to visit, and facts I need to check.  Can I do everything I need to do in 2 or 3 days without falling behind in my other projects?

This is the life that I wanted but sheesh it feels crazy to already be here and is it going to be worth it? I am soon to find out.

I think I might actually be able to start telling people that I am a writer now…  When people ask me what I do I usually just shrug my shoulders and say nothing really.

Now as it stands I have two blog posts a week to write for an area business – the Front Utah.  I have a ton of content to write for my new project with BootsnAll – TravelGearBlog, a couple posts a week to write on my Salt Lake City blog with NileGuide blog and an iPhone App due ASAP.  I was also planning on launching a new blog June 1 but I guess we will see about that.  Oh yeah and there are those 20 hours of contract work a week with the University of Utah thankfully ending June 1 and a bunch of other mini projects.

I know there are plenty of y’all out there that do ten times as much work and have children, live out of your suitcase, or have full-time jobs.  Now I am figuring out that the busy you are the more you actually accomplish and the better you manage your time.  Onward and stokeward – let’s go kick some ass!

For any of you following DirtbagWriter I have obviously abandoned my publication schedule during this last week and have well… decided to abandon it completely.  My gears have been churning and many new opportunities have risen from the dust so I’ve decided to make some big changes here.

Have you ever felt like starting over?  Well I am (sort of).  I am taking everything I’ve learned from the blogging world, Matador U, and all the peeps I’ve met over the last year and launching a whole new site dedicated to traveling the “Dirtbag” way.  I think I’ve finally narrowed in on that oh so elusive niche and am totally stoked to start a new site as well as several new projects that I will be announcing soon.

I will keep DirtbagWriter as my personal site and update it with news and updates on my writing aspirations as well as random thoughts or anything else I feel like sharing.

Stay tuned for the new site launch on June 1.

I was listening to this podcast the other day while road tripping through the desert and found myself both saddened and furious.  In Stuff You Should Know’s Will the moon save humanity?, Josh and Chuck are pondering the end of the world and discussing projects that may save humanity.

In the intro they discuss projects such as Norway’s “Doomsday” Seed Vault and the British DNA depository which supposedly can rebuild an entire ecosystem from plant, animal, and human DNA stores. They wonder, “Which ecosystem?” do we have the power to rebuild.  “Is it a desert? Cuz who really wants to rebuild that?”  Nobody, they agree.

Views From the Hidden Valley Trail - Moab, Utah

Well I would! Begin sadness…

I know this whole desert as wasteland belief is widely held but I really don’t understand how the desert got such a bum rap.  Most people that have actually been to the desert find themselves totally awestruck and surprised by both its simplicity and beauty.  The tough part seems to get people there in the first place…

Cholla Cactus and Joshua Trees in the Mojave National Preserve

I have to admit the beauty of the desert didn’t immediately take me over but more slowly captured my spirit.

I’ve since devoured the words of Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, and Katie Lee.  I longed for their gift of story telling – their ability to move people into action.  Their words have made desert virgins chuck everything to experience Desert Solitaire from the eyes of Ed.  They have inspired others to devote their being to protecting unnamed canyons and relics of cultures that came before us and moved some to risk their own freedom trying to stop quasi-legal oil and gas leases.

I tried to explain how places with names like Onion Creek, Elephant Canyon, Hatch Wash made me feel – what they stirred inside of me.  On paper I was wordless, but in spirit I was spewing flawless prose.

And so I’ve decided to giveaway the words of others. I want to share the stories that have so moved me with the hopes of changing just one person’s belief of the desert as barren and meaningless.

I will start with Edward Abbey’s classic, Desert Solitaire.  This is Abbey’s memoir of his years as a ranger at Arches National Monument (now National Park) outside of Moab, Utah.  It is a great intro to environmentalism and the growing threats of mining, the auto industry, and tourism on our fragile wilderness.  Both thought-provoking and rebel-rousing, Desert Solitaire has moved pacifists to grab the nearest monkey wrench and raise some hell.

Balanced Rock at Arches National Park

Like all free things there is a catch.  After reading the book you must either give the book to someone else and/or let me know (in just a few sentences) what you got out of the book.  Did you gain any new insights?  Did the book inspire you in anyway or do you still strongly advocate strip mining? You will then be featured in the blog and receive much fame and link love-age.

To enter simply leave a comment (perhaps some desert thoughts) before April 20, 2010 and the winner will be chosen randomly and announced April, 21, 2010.

Hiking Through Chesler Park - Needles District, Canyonlands National Park

To conclude, here are some words from Ed in Desert Solitaire:

“Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Flowering Cactus in Joshua Tree National Park

I just finished reading 4 Classic Mistakes I Made In My First Year of Blogging which led me to reflect on all the things I think I’ve done wrong with this blog.  And then I read Abbie Mood’s This Niche Business is Stressing Me Out and then I really started spiraling.

For a while I’ve been worried that my blog name is lame, but when I came up with the name I had no idea people would actually be reading this.

As the story goes, I was bored at work one day and was futzing around with things and decided to spend the $10 and buy a domain name so I could futz more freely.  At the time of blog naming, I had fantasized about this whole dirtbagging thing – I guess I was mustering up ideas for future world domination.

I wanted to be a writer and I also knew that the only way I was going to be able to leave my job and follow all my dreams was by being a total dirbag, which had pretty much been my total travel style all along.  Some people would describe dirtbagging as minimalistic or budget travel but I like to think of dirtbagging as more of a lifestyle.  So to me a dirtbag is an extreme budget traveler that is ambitious, eco-conscience, and cooperative – a major dreamer, adventurer, and conventional dissenter.  So I paired dirtbag with what I wanted to be and there you have it – dirtbag writer.

Still I wonder if dirtbag writer is super cheeseball and I wonder what I would name my blog if I were naming it now.

I wouldn’t use my name because for one: people can never spell it right so they would never be able to find it again and for two: I am too shy.  I’ve written some really personal stuff and some total babble and really haven’t been too stoked about people I know actually reading this stuff.  But then I started reading Julie Schwietert’s blog and started considering the importance of owning what I wrote and now I am wondering if I am hiding too much behind this dirtbag facade.

So I’m curious.  How did you name your blog?  Do you wish you had named it something different?  Are you totally sick of the name or are you just starting to grow into it?

I have been working as the Local Expert for Salt Lake City (and recently Park City) for NileGuide since October 2009.  Just this past week – NileGuide launched individual travel blogs for each of their destinations.

NileGuide is pretty sweet.  I often get frustrated when I visit a new city and google restaurants and get bombarded with ancient Citysearch listings and the like.  NileGuide lets you create your own guide to a city and now with the new blogs, gives you a bit more about the local happenings.

Thus far I’ve be incredibly thrilled with the experience and NileGuide seems to keep coming up with exciting new opportunities for writers.  Plus they are currently looking for web-savvy individuals for their local expert program.  See jobs at Nileguide for more info about qualifications, compensations, and how to apply.

So if you ever find yourself in Salt Lake City check out the new blog – Salt Lake City Local Flavor – for the latest info on events and restaurant recommendations.

Spring weather combined with my new obsession of reading minimalist blogs has inspired me to declutter my apartment.  Heeding the wisdom of Leo Babuta of Zen Habits I am tackling one area of me casa at a time versus my normal behavior of tearing the entire house apart, followed by a freak out and then a month long attempt of getting my house back in order.  This week, one bookshelf, a day at a time…

As I browse through the first shelf I wonder why it is so difficult to get rid of books.  I can toss out clothes as easy as I toss out the trash but there is something about books that just keeps me holding on.  I decided to attack the center shelf first and it held a surprising amount of books I had never finished.

I found it hilarious that each and every one of these books still had a bookmark in it – a bookmark from Between the Covers in Telluride, a piece of stationary from the Double Tree, another bookmark from my favorite used bookstore in the world, Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis, and a plane ticket stub – San Jose, Costa Rica to Houston.

Instead of shipping these books out the door they will now find a place in the queue on the ridiculous high stack beside my bed.

A History of Women Volume 1 – Front Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints

I bought A History of Women in the West during my Red Tent, DaVinci Code, Pope Joan phase.  It is the first book in five-volume series detailing the history of women from the ancients through the twentieth century – I had aspired to read all five.  A bookmark holds my place on page 15.  Obviously I found fiction more intriguing than the real history of women.

Guns, Germs, and Steels

I guess I am slightly bitter about my non-liberal arts education.  At the time I thought majoring in Molecular Biology was super cool (which it was sort of), but I sadly did not get to take any real electives in college.  I only had time in my schedule for the required English class and I missed out in all sorts of classes that I would find fascinating now like Anthropology, World Religions, and Middle Eastern History.  When I worked at the University I entertained the idea of going back to school and taking all the courses I missed out on (since I got half off tuition) but a friend of mine told me to read Guns, Germs, and Steel instead, which I did and got to page 95 – not bad.

A People’s History of the United States

I had wanted to read A People’s History forever since opening it up and reading the first chapter in someone’s bathroom at a party quite a few years back.  I finally picked the book up in an airport last year and got so thoroughly bummed out by chapter 4 I haven’t picked it back up.  The book tells the stories of American history from different points of view – like the view from the Native Americans, the working poor, or America’s women.  Hearing the story of Columbus from the point of view of the Arawak Indians is enough to make you want to go back to grade school and vomit all over the history texts.

A History of God

Karen Armstrong’s A History of God had totally enthralled me for the first 51 pages and then I am not really sure what happened.  I set the book down probably five years ago or so I think -  maybe distracted by all the others on my stack during my Buddhist book phase and haven’t picked it up until this moment.

Hmmm I am now curious what all these books hold.

Do you check your google reader eagerly multiple times a day for new posts from your favorite bloggers or do you know when to expect their next post?  Do you ever start to worry about peeps if they haven’t posted in a while?

Personally I post things to my blog simply at whim, when I feel like I have something to say or when I have the time to get something together.  But all the reading I have done lately advises against the post-at-whim model and supports a strict posting schedule.

Chris Gullebeau, of The Art of Non-Conformity, strongly advocates that bloggers serious about the trade stick to a clear publishing schedule.  He feels that announcing the schedule on your site and sticking to it communicates to your readers that you are serious and that you won’t be giving up anytime soon.

Secretly I’ve been trying to adopt a blog posting schedule all year, but if you look back at my posts you will see that they are totally unpredictable.  Clearly I have failed at this task.

Truth is I suck at time management and can’t keep to a schedule if my life depended on it.  I just love the rush of putting things off to the last minute and thrive under pressure and times of utter chaos.  I love deadlines because they seem to be the only things that motivate me into action.

So I have decided to instill deadlines upon myself and announce my publishing schedule to the world.  I agree to commit to the schedule for at least… hmmmm – well how about I just start with 1 month and go from there.  So here it is:

MONDAY: On Writing – Random thoughts about the writing life, job leads, and publishing.

WEDNESDAY: On the Road – Travel musings about the places I’ve been and places I’m headed.

FRIDAY: On Living – My psychoses, ramblings, and the like.

OTHER DAYS:  This is just the minimum so I am not going to be limited to just these days.  Once I hit the road again I will aim to post more frequently.

And this is how I plan on doing it:

5 Ways To Make Yourself Stick to a Blog Publishing Schedule

1. Announce Your Schedule On Your Blog: See above.  Making your publishing schedule known to your readers steps up your personal commitment to the blog.
2. Outline Posts a Week Ahead of Time:  At the beginning of each week outline the topics for each of your scheduled posts, when you get really good at this you can even schedule your posts further into the future.
3. Keep a List of Potential Ideas:  On the spreadsheet I use to keep track of my scheduled posts, I also keep a list of all my random future post ideas so I hopefully never run out of post ideas.
4. Utilize Alternative Blog Post Material: Need a break from creating original content for your blog – find other bloggers to contribute guest posts, write a link roundup, or post a photo essay.
5. Use the Scheduled Post Function:  Just realized that you can schedule a post to be published in the future in WordPress.  So I can’t use the excuse that I’ve been in the woods for the last week since I can schedule the posts ahead of time.  Brilliant.

What are your thoughts about blog publishing schedules?  Do you think it is a great idea or super lame?  Do you stick to a publishing schedule?

I was at the Outdoor Retailer’s Convention the other week and picked up the March copy of Trail Runner magazine pre-release date.  My heart began to race with excitement as I thumbed through the pages of the magazine searching for my name in print (the first time it will appear in a real magazine).  And then I saw it – the article that I had written… but wait a minute… that byline isn’t me it’s my alter ego Aimee.

Chances are if you even know my name, you think there is nothing wrong with the above spelling but in fact my name is spelled as follows: A-M-I-E-E.  Yeah I know – just two little letters swapped an “m” and an “i” out of place – but ughhh I was so thoroughly bummed – it doesn’t even feel like me.  I have been plagued with thirty years of incorrect spellings and I have honestly had enough.

I guess it all started with my birth.  My mother named me after her aunt and it wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that my Great Aunt Amiee actually spells her name Aimee.  It turns out my mother spelled my name wrong on the birth certificate and cursed me with a lifetime of misspellings.

Bank statements, magazine subscriptions, pay stubs, childhood awards and trophies, medical records – nearly all spelled wrong.

Flickr:Vintage Collective

I have two high school diplomas – one for Aimee that was handed to me on graduation day and one for Amiee that I received months later after much begging and pleading for.  You see, for some reason no one thinks a misspelling is that big of a deal.  But then just try and screw with the spelling of their name and they freak!

And it is not just the “M-I” vs “I-M” thing.  A few years ago (in my former academic researchy life), I was super stoked to be second author on a paper in a fairly reputable journal, which somehow managed to botch my last name leaving the ‘L” off the end – sheesh.

Oh and then there was that time my grandmother sent me a birthday card that said “Happy Birthday Amy” and when I questioned her about it she said that she was simply in a hurry.  Those two letters must have saved her so much time…

One of my earliest childhood memories was getting a verbal whupping at home because I spelled my name A-M-Y on the back of an art project.  At age 5 I was already sick of everybody getting my name wrong and tried to take control of the situation.  My parents took it personally and lectured me on the importance of owning my name.  I think that was the first time I ever got in trouble for anything – so their words stuck and oh do I get pissed when people screw up my name.

Proudly,
Amiee

Header photo courtesy of Wickenden

The results of my time audit are in and well they are exactly as I had feared – I am a horrendous time waster. Although I don’t piss away hours at the TV or on the phone, I spend several hours in front of the computer willing beautiful prose to spontaneously compose while I stare enviously at other people’s work and I get distracted by every thought that pops into my head – oooh what was the name of that book I wanted to check out, I should see if they have it at the library or I wonder what the weather is going to be like tomorrow or I better check the laundry or I wonder if the mail is here yet – ughhh.

For, four days I kept track of what I was doing in 15-minute increments. In doing so, my awareness heightened for any time I was distracted and landed off task. I started keeping a tally sheet near my desk and every time I took a short break, checked my email, grabbed a snack, checked the weather, and answered the phone (basically anything that threw me off task even for seconds) – I got a tally mark. Within hours I had filled up the sheet and totally discovered my problem, a borderline addiction to distractions.  Here are some ways I am going to work at minimizing all those distractions:

7 Ways to Minimize Distractions as a Freelance Writer

1. Clearly identify goals at the start of the day. Many of you have suggested clearly identifying your daily, weekly, and even monthly goals. Weekly goals include some biggies such as find a new writing market or send out 3 new queries whereas the daily goals are the smaller more manageable ones like finish that blog post or do the background research for that article.

2. Plan to work at your most productive times. The Time Audit also made me aware of my most productive times. I already knew that I am totally worthless from about 2-5pm, so I shouldn’t expect to accomplish something big during those hours. The afternoon (for me) is a great time to catch up on reading, twittering, work searches, and emails or is a fabulous time to head to the gym or just take a nap.

3. Turn off the phone, email pop-ups, and instant messaging program.

4. Close all Internet browsers that are not relevant to the task at hand.

5. Say good-bye to multi-tasking. I always thought the ability to multi-task was a good thing, but it just doesn’t seem to work for freelancing. For me, attempting several tasks at once only results in several unfinished tasks.

6. Change up the workspace. Unfortunately my bitty cheap-o apartment has no room for a separate office space and I am not upgrading anytime soon. I’ve found that I get more accomplished during 2 hours at the coffee shop or library as I do for the entire day at home.

7. Relax. Remind yourself regularly of why you are writing and the amazing life you are working towards. If I can just keep myself on task – maybe I will never need to see the inside of the cube again.

Helpful Freelance Writing Time Management Resources:

How to Stay on Track with Your Freelance Writing Business

Discipline and Persistence = Freelance Writing Success

Managing Performance Anxiety: 5 Tips for Freelancers