LostInaFog.com

Not me. I’m barely in corporate America to begin with. My past and current are packed with tech start-ups, entrepreneurial self-ventures, non-profit, and for-profit but for-service small companies. I haven’t worked for a company as big as 3000 employees since my first job out of school.

I resolve for 2007…

…to be more diligent in seeking out the joy in life.

…to write more, for the sake of writing, as a crutch for introspection, and to tell the stories that bounce around in my head.

…to be open to adventure, to seek exhilaration, and to just every so often throw caution to the wind.

…to be there to teach my children, to protect them, and to see the world through their eyes.

I have made a living for a great deal of my life as a writer. Not the sexy I just hit the NYT Bestseller List stuff, but more mundane things. I wrote and published newsletters for book collectors for about ten years, wrote for several financial newsletters for several years, did some freelance research writing for some Wall Street firms, and most recently have been writing about SPACs (you’ll just have to look it up if you care) for another specialty financial publication. But over the last several months I’ve moved from a regular job back into the project world. I’ve stacked myself up pretty heavily for the next several months with a nearly fulltime gig for the summer and another 10 hour/week consulting job on top of that. And I’ve committed to a couple of more articles on those SPACs.

After leaving a real job for the world of consulting and freelance work I found myself sometimes craving the workplace. It wasn’t the work or the watercooler or the constant interaction that I missed really, but more the complete change in rituals.

At the office I had dropped into several habits for my workday. Each day I arrived about the same time, dropped into my teams’ offices to check for issues or see if help was needed. Grabbed a cup of coffee, sat down and started through my email…you know, what you might call the rut. But I missed that stuff nonetheless.

I’ve made my living for a great portion of my life as a writer, though of the dedicated, owned variety. I recently delivered and saw published the first freelance article I’d taken on in quite awhile. Can I jump into freelancing and make a living? Probably not–the ex and the creditors and the electric company are unlikely to agree to a complete cut and run. But I think I can make it into a nice sideline and I am all about mulitple streams of income and diversity at the moment.

We list just a few links in the lefthand sidebar of every page you view on this site. We could list a bazillion sites, as link trading is a great way to build awareness for LostInaFog, but have instead chosen to add new links cautiously. Some of these linked blogs also link to us, and some don’t. When approached to exchange links, I’ll happily add the link, actually read that linked blog for a while and then either keep it or dump it depending on my take on the content. I can see that some of you folks do check out those links occasionally, but thought I’d highlight a couple today that you might enjoy.

This month’s Fast Company has an article about James Montier, the Global Equity Strategist for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. Do you remember that name? He made a bit of a splash a couple of years ago by putting out a “research report” entitled “The Psychology of Happiness”. The subheading reads–

If you are after specific investment advice, stop reading now. We seek to explore one of Adam Smith’s obsessions: what it means to be happy. We also discuss why that’s important to investors, and how we can seek to improve our own levels of happiness…

I wish I had a good potato joke to go with that headline….let’s see….two spuds walk into a bar, one says “do you really love me?” and the other says “you know I only have eyes for you.” I know. OK, lets skip the joke.

I’ve been spending a large chunk of my time in the last month looking for new projects or a great place to land for a new fulltime gig. Along the way I’ve had some fascinating talks with really smart people. By trade I’ve been a numbers guy most of my career, despite having made a living writing for more than 10 years in the middle there. I like to say that I do both words and numbers. And I like doing both. Though being able to do more than one finite thing seems to cause trouble when looking for new gigs of interest. Its easier when head hunters and potential clients/employers can see you in just one way. Somehow being great at multiple things gets translated into not being good at anything in some folks’ minds.

I keep changing up My Podcast Subscriptions, adding on new casts as I find stuff of interest. I’ve readded Rocketboom and a couple of other video casts this time. Clearly, I need to cull the herd a bit as I am now having trouble getting through them all and find myself giving them the quick hook when the first few minutes aren’t grabbing me.

Quantum Biocommunication (don’t you love that name?) has a piece on a Study that Reveals How to Become a Highly Creative Person. It ties to a book by Dr. R. Keith Sawyer called Explaining Creativity . I tend to find academics a bit tiresome when it comes to explaining things that I would describe as closer to art than science, but I found this brief review of the findings in this book excellent. I agree that a lot of the myths of the creative genius in our society are just that–lies retold until we think they are true.

I’ve been spending a good deal of net time in the last week researching what is happening with blogs in business. There are some famous company blogs, like Robert Scoble’s Microsoft site and more and more seem to be joining everyday. Some of them are obviously part of the company’s communications strategy, and others seem just to have evolved from personal blogs of fans or employees. It seems pretty early in the game.