Back in the saddle.

Back in the saddle.

As one might expect after a long weekend, sans Internerd, I returned to civilization feeling mentally refreshed, if a bit physically rundown due to a late-Summer cold (in October!) brought on by consecutive late-nights and truly excessive numbers of cigarettes. It's not my fault though, do have any idea how cheap ye olde cancer sticks are in the sticks? Mind-blowing.

After a day of working at home -- and it's truly stunning how much more work I seem to get done when I'm home, though I guess that's probably Catholic guilt driving me for fear someone at the office would think I'm slacking -- and writing some stuff up for Chicagoist ahead of time, and two workouts at the gym yesterday, I'm feeling like I'm back on track. I have a few upcoming deadlines, some self-imposed and some set by freelance assignments, so I'm feeling a definite sense of purpose, and am feeling particularly fruitful. That should reflect well in my writing.

I think part of the reason this is happening now is because we now have a full-time EiC at Chicagoist. She's been good at rallying the troops so I can focus on A&E stuff -- one thrilling side-effect of that is that I actually get to discuss their ideas with them ahead of time since I'm not busy trying to edit the whole site with my fellow Associate Editor -- while at the same time putting pressure on me to up my own posting frequency*. My quota used to be two posts a week, and while that's still my "official" quota, I've found myself exceeding that on a regular basis. The effect has been one I should have expected, since it's genetically tied into the reason I post here daily during the work week: when forced to churn out content no matter what, you often start looking in unexpected places, or start leaving your safety zone, and the results are often pretty exciting.

Sometime people will ask me how I come up with something to write every day, and my honest answer is that I have no idea. All that I do know is that writing is a discipline, and this is the best way that I know of to keep the needed mental muscles limber and ready to go.

Also, it doesn't hurt that I can start a post, go off on a tangent, and hit a conclusion that has nothing to do with my intro!

*Loyal readers have probably also noticed I've been contributing a little more often to donewaiting too. w00t!