All right, here's the drill.

For the last year-and-some-change I've been thinking a lot about next steps. I've been thinking about grad school, and about careers, and about what I want to do with Life. I've been thinking about writing, and designing, and creating stuff, and, well, you readers of mine know what I've been thinking about.

Recently I've pretty much made up my mind that whatever's going to happen regarding grad school isn't going to happen next year. I've spent this year getting Dreamsbay off the ground, and it is, kind of. It's up on its legs, but they're like wobbly newborn colt legs. The deliverables package still isn't done, the workflow is still herky-jerky, and I still suck at estimating how long some things take. I'm also still wrestling with things like billing cycles and invoicing, all the stuff that small business owners have to worry about. All of these things are still out of focus, and they need to be worked at harder in order to really make them work. Year One has been the dive-in-hold-your-nose-and-get-messy year. Instead of going to grad school next year, I think I'm going to engage in Year Two of Dreamsbay University. I'm learning a lot. I need to learn a lot more. And I need to be making money while doing it, not going really deep into the financial hole.

Someday I will have a Master's. I know this. I hope someday I might also have a PhD. But right now, I've got to keep putting one foot in front of the other and try to focus.

I'm going to be twenty-six soon. Where do I want to be when I hit thirty?

I spent most of this week building out my portfolio, trying to redesign dreamsbay.com and basically going over a lot of the things that I've been doing this year. I updated my timeline. I've done a lot, but it still strikes me that there's not enough play being done here. I have a lot of client projects in the portfolio, but the novels still aren't done, I haven't written any short stories in forever, and I haven't made any art lately. No short films. No little animations. None of that stuff. What gives?

One of the things I'm looking to do with Dreamsbay this year is to do more art. Yes, making more money is also part of the plan, but it's the play that keeps the new ideas rolling, prevents the burnout. I need to play some more... If for no better reason than to add new, cool stuff to the portfolio and to keep those mindfires burning.

Of course, I have to do enough client work to be able to afford to play... Ah, the joy of small business.