Hi Friends,

There are a lot of progress on all fronts and things are moving at a good pace.  Some things I can reveal publicly are:

• I started working on a new prog rock song “Hurt Cause Machine.”  This one should clock in at about 9 minutes and will further establish Heavy Poet‘s sound.
• I did meet a fabulous singer and we’re trying out collaborating — hopefully I can tell you more about him soon!
• I read 4-Hour Body and its insight on diet and abs training has been really great, among other things.
• I’m also reading JavaScript Patterns and that’s helping me become a better JavaScript developer.

I’ve also taken some much-needed time off and am experimenting with a different blogging frequencies.  Before I had a one-post per workday pace, but then I felt like I was producing fillers — I was writing posts I can finish in the limited time I spend blogging each day, instead of concentrating on those that I think are really helpful.  So I’m switching to blogging every workday but not necessarily posting.  I like the quality of my output better, but this method takes a lot more mental discipline, as it’s hard to stay on task over multiple days.  It has a danger of leaving unfinished posts everywhere, as I jump from topic to topic on different days depending on what I feel like writing about.

In general, I need to stay focused on maintaining the good routines that are working.  It’s funny because in the past I’ve eased up on routines right when they start showing visible progress — seeing it produce results somehow relaxes me too much.  So I need to stay on top of:

• Blogging
• Learning new things as a developer
• Practicing my guitar
• Making progress on my songs
• Exercising
• Networking

That’s a lot to keep up, but keep up I must, as long as they are at a slow yet regular pace.  I’m purposely not worrying about increasing traffic to my web sites, for example.  I just want to maintain a regular pace for one whole year.  Then, I’ll worry about results.

The point is to live a certain way.  Results will come, if I do it long enough.  I realize that’s not true for everybody, but I have a hunch that it applies to me.  Diligence is one character trait I badly need.