I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I really enjoyed myself and took the entire week off to spend time with my family and friends. Sometimes I feel like, when taking time off, I won’t be able to start up again. It’s like I have two speeds, on and off, and if I turn it off I won’t be able to turn it on again.
I liken it to the feeling I get when I take an afternoon nap (which I rarely do). I can be in a deep sleep but somewhere I am conscious of the need to wake up and can’t seem to get my eyes to open. Of course, it is only a feeling, and just like with the nap where I eventually open my eyes and come back to life, I do get back in the groove of work!
My friend Sandra wrote a post about this phenomenon and tied it into the 3 different Aruvedic body constitutions Kapha, Pita, and Vata. She and I are both Kaphas, who in general have a particularly difficult time with starting and stopping. Whereas someone like my husband, who is a Pita, just never stops in the first place.
But I was eager to get back to work this week because it is the four-year anniversary of New Tricks and tomorrow is my birthday!
Four years ago, right after the election, with our country in terrible financial straits, I started my business. I knew it was odd timing, but people kept asking me to help them with their businesses and to help them create a new online presence. After a while, I came to realize that I had new calling and had better get myself a business card and a website. I started working on my New Tricks logo four years ago on my birthday. It has been quite a trip.
That first year while trying to learn what I needed to know to do websites as a commercial endeavor, I probably made three dollars an hour – if that. I went to my first WordCamp in April of 2009 and worried there would only be young guy geeks attending. Yes, a bunch of them were there, along with all sorts of people and to my surprise, I had more experience with WordPress than 3/4 of the people there.
By 2010, I was co-organizer of our local WordPress Meetup with over 1200 members and in 2012, I co-organized WordCamp Atlanta for 400 people. Matt Mullenweg, a founding developer of WordPress, attended WordCamp and came to a party at my house.
But, what I am most grateful for are the hundreds of clients I have worked with, many of whom have turned into good friends and my growing list of followers. Thank you all for such a great ride!
