An End to the Year's Work
Dec. 24th, 2020 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
For many years now it has been my tradition to take off from work between Christmas and New Year's. I think maybe it started at Chaosium? I'm not sure, but as of this afternoon I'm officially on holiday.
And my what a varied work year it's been.
I was still working at Skotos when I moved to Hawaii. And, I took a little extra holiday vacation, not working for the Thursday and Friday after our arrival. But I know the Thursday was spent getting furniture for our house, and then there were many evenings spent building.
But after that few days, it was back to Skotos. I was supposed to work there through March. I kept going until May. That was because the new authentication server was not ready, and so we couldn't split out the games, and so I spent an extra two months of my time to make sure we could divest ourselves of them correctly, which seemed the right thing to do after twenty years of me supporting them and them supporting me.
And even that wasn't quite the end of Skotos work. I've given Chris a day a month ever since, the last of which was this Wednesday. But I've told him that's it.
And Skotos is mostly shutdown. We need to do a tiny bit of work to turn off our last machines, and I left Chris with some lists of lawyers and accountants to talk to, but after a year's work, and to various extents nine months more than was intended, I think I've mostly put that behind me. It's a big page turning.
My other major professional work for the year was Blockchain Commons. That was mixed in with my Skotos work for the first two or three months, and then I had to fully step away to get Skotos closed. Since them it's gotten two days a week (except when Skotos needed a day).
Blockchain Commons is in some ways delightful work. I enjoy the blockchain and Bitcoin technology: its intricacies, its foundational tech, and its premise of self-sovereign independence online. When I combine that with a strong project, an extended development that takes full advantage of both my technical and writing expertise, that's excellent.
The best project of the year was our 2.0 version of Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line. Chris and I did a v0.8 or so while working at Blockstream, but it fizzled out when we left that company, so it was delightful to not just finish it, but also expand it for a few years of new development. I'm very happy with the result, with is pretty much a text book on Bitcoin Core. And we know it's been influential, as we're aware of several engineers who got into Bitcoin through it.
Blockchain Commons has also included some less fulfilling work, including editorial work on other peoples' writing, shorter pieces, and fund-raising work. I'm happy to do it because I believe in the company (and because I'm getting paid a proper expert technical writing rate), but I'm always happier when I'm working on a meaty project that makes best use of my expertise.
I finished up my Blockchain Commons work for the year on Tuesday. My last work was some editorial support for Gordian Cosigner, one of the many, impressive pieces of software developed over the last few years. (It allows protected signing of multi-sigs on the Bitcoin network.)
I theoretically have two other clients.
One is Rebooting the Web of Trust, and I did some work on some dangling papers at the start of the year, but meanwhile our Buenos Aires and Hague workshops got canceled due to COVID. There's talk of virtual get-togethers, which is totally not what interests me about RWOT, but I can deal with one virtual workshop if it's what we need to leverage ourselves back into real meetings, hopefully next Fall. We'll see what 2021 brings.
The other is Bitmark, another blockchain company, who I gave somewhere in the range of 5-10 days of work over the course of the year. Not a lot, but they get darned good output from me because I usually think about their work, then hit the ground running when I'm writing for them. I did get one pretty meaty project from them, which was a manual for an upcoming app that I finished a few weeks ago. I'm hoping we're going to be developing some nice articles related to it early next year.
I'm still doing 5 days of week. Two days go to Blockchain Commons (and were sometimes co-opted by Skotos), some undefined (PRN) amount of time goes to RWOT and Bitmark. The rest goes to my personal projects. That was about half of my worktime from June onward.
In that time I researched and wrote somewhere over half a book of Designers & Dragons: The Lost Histories. It comes in at 73.5k words, though the very last 5k or so words are out for editorial review. (That's what I finished today when I maybe ended my personal work for the year.) I'm thumbnailing the Designers & Dragons books at 120k words, so that's about 60% of a book. I've also got 15.5k words for Designers & Dragons: The '10s. I'm hoping to have two Lost Histories and one '10s book ready for a publisher (hopefully Evil Hat) in 2022, so that seems on schedule.
I also prepared a whole book on The TSR Codex. This is not exactly fresh work like the new Designers & Dragons volumes, but it's heavy editorial and revising, in some cases requiring almost total rewrites. (It's material I originally wrote for DnDclassics, and depending on its pedigree, it's either 80% of the way to the style I've developed for the books, for newer stuff, or as little as 20% or so, for the older stuff.) I'm also 1/6th of the way into a second book. I'd hoped to have the two books about the '70s and '80s ready for a publisher in 2021, and you might that I'm well on the way to that since I have 7/6th of a book, but the truth is that I've determined those first two books are actually four, so that personal deadline is blown. 2023? We'll see.
I've got lots of other stuff I'm playing with. I've got an old Michael Moorcock book that I'm making progress on again by editing my old material and reading to generate new material. I'm talking with Chaosium about an elf book, to replace (but not exactly reuse) the one I wrote for Issaries just before they went out of business. I've also been talking with Christopher about continuing our comics. Finally, I've produced a few new case studies for Meeples Together. Not enough: my support there has been erratic. Maybe I need to drop them back from semi-monthly to monthly, and see if I can meet that schedule.
It was easy to stop work for the end of year when I was working for Skotos. It's a little harder now that I'm working for myself. But, Chris and Bitmark both were good about respecting my rejuvenative time.
So will I work on my own projects? Yes, some, but not a lot.
I'm definitely swearing off going to my office every weekday for the next week.
I just finished my next Lost History (BTRC), so that can sit for a week.
But I definitely have a year-end history that I need to get ready in the next week or so.
And when I go out hiking, hopefully multiple times in the next week, I do like to bring my computer along, and I'll probably inevitably do some writing. Because I love writing out in nature. Probably on the third chapter of TSR Codex II, because I didn't finish it this month, so it's a loose end.
But this week I also plan to relax. I haven't read enough this year. It'd be nice to do some of that. I bought myself the Galaxy Trucker game on Steam, and I've been enjoying its campaign. And as I said, hiking, and swimming.
I used to sometimes think it was a shame that I took a week off during the coldest, most miserable time of the year. Now, that's no longer an issue. Unless it rains a lot. (But it's not looking bad.)
And my what a varied work year it's been.
I was still working at Skotos when I moved to Hawaii. And, I took a little extra holiday vacation, not working for the Thursday and Friday after our arrival. But I know the Thursday was spent getting furniture for our house, and then there were many evenings spent building.
But after that few days, it was back to Skotos. I was supposed to work there through March. I kept going until May. That was because the new authentication server was not ready, and so we couldn't split out the games, and so I spent an extra two months of my time to make sure we could divest ourselves of them correctly, which seemed the right thing to do after twenty years of me supporting them and them supporting me.
And even that wasn't quite the end of Skotos work. I've given Chris a day a month ever since, the last of which was this Wednesday. But I've told him that's it.
And Skotos is mostly shutdown. We need to do a tiny bit of work to turn off our last machines, and I left Chris with some lists of lawyers and accountants to talk to, but after a year's work, and to various extents nine months more than was intended, I think I've mostly put that behind me. It's a big page turning.
My other major professional work for the year was Blockchain Commons. That was mixed in with my Skotos work for the first two or three months, and then I had to fully step away to get Skotos closed. Since them it's gotten two days a week (except when Skotos needed a day).
Blockchain Commons is in some ways delightful work. I enjoy the blockchain and Bitcoin technology: its intricacies, its foundational tech, and its premise of self-sovereign independence online. When I combine that with a strong project, an extended development that takes full advantage of both my technical and writing expertise, that's excellent.
The best project of the year was our 2.0 version of Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line. Chris and I did a v0.8 or so while working at Blockstream, but it fizzled out when we left that company, so it was delightful to not just finish it, but also expand it for a few years of new development. I'm very happy with the result, with is pretty much a text book on Bitcoin Core. And we know it's been influential, as we're aware of several engineers who got into Bitcoin through it.
Blockchain Commons has also included some less fulfilling work, including editorial work on other peoples' writing, shorter pieces, and fund-raising work. I'm happy to do it because I believe in the company (and because I'm getting paid a proper expert technical writing rate), but I'm always happier when I'm working on a meaty project that makes best use of my expertise.
I finished up my Blockchain Commons work for the year on Tuesday. My last work was some editorial support for Gordian Cosigner, one of the many, impressive pieces of software developed over the last few years. (It allows protected signing of multi-sigs on the Bitcoin network.)
I theoretically have two other clients.
One is Rebooting the Web of Trust, and I did some work on some dangling papers at the start of the year, but meanwhile our Buenos Aires and Hague workshops got canceled due to COVID. There's talk of virtual get-togethers, which is totally not what interests me about RWOT, but I can deal with one virtual workshop if it's what we need to leverage ourselves back into real meetings, hopefully next Fall. We'll see what 2021 brings.
The other is Bitmark, another blockchain company, who I gave somewhere in the range of 5-10 days of work over the course of the year. Not a lot, but they get darned good output from me because I usually think about their work, then hit the ground running when I'm writing for them. I did get one pretty meaty project from them, which was a manual for an upcoming app that I finished a few weeks ago. I'm hoping we're going to be developing some nice articles related to it early next year.
I'm still doing 5 days of week. Two days go to Blockchain Commons (and were sometimes co-opted by Skotos), some undefined (PRN) amount of time goes to RWOT and Bitmark. The rest goes to my personal projects. That was about half of my worktime from June onward.
In that time I researched and wrote somewhere over half a book of Designers & Dragons: The Lost Histories. It comes in at 73.5k words, though the very last 5k or so words are out for editorial review. (That's what I finished today when I maybe ended my personal work for the year.) I'm thumbnailing the Designers & Dragons books at 120k words, so that's about 60% of a book. I've also got 15.5k words for Designers & Dragons: The '10s. I'm hoping to have two Lost Histories and one '10s book ready for a publisher (hopefully Evil Hat) in 2022, so that seems on schedule.
I also prepared a whole book on The TSR Codex. This is not exactly fresh work like the new Designers & Dragons volumes, but it's heavy editorial and revising, in some cases requiring almost total rewrites. (It's material I originally wrote for DnDclassics, and depending on its pedigree, it's either 80% of the way to the style I've developed for the books, for newer stuff, or as little as 20% or so, for the older stuff.) I'm also 1/6th of the way into a second book. I'd hoped to have the two books about the '70s and '80s ready for a publisher in 2021, and you might that I'm well on the way to that since I have 7/6th of a book, but the truth is that I've determined those first two books are actually four, so that personal deadline is blown. 2023? We'll see.
I've got lots of other stuff I'm playing with. I've got an old Michael Moorcock book that I'm making progress on again by editing my old material and reading to generate new material. I'm talking with Chaosium about an elf book, to replace (but not exactly reuse) the one I wrote for Issaries just before they went out of business. I've also been talking with Christopher about continuing our comics. Finally, I've produced a few new case studies for Meeples Together. Not enough: my support there has been erratic. Maybe I need to drop them back from semi-monthly to monthly, and see if I can meet that schedule.
It was easy to stop work for the end of year when I was working for Skotos. It's a little harder now that I'm working for myself. But, Chris and Bitmark both were good about respecting my rejuvenative time.
So will I work on my own projects? Yes, some, but not a lot.
I'm definitely swearing off going to my office every weekday for the next week.
I just finished my next Lost History (BTRC), so that can sit for a week.
But I definitely have a year-end history that I need to get ready in the next week or so.
And when I go out hiking, hopefully multiple times in the next week, I do like to bring my computer along, and I'll probably inevitably do some writing. Because I love writing out in nature. Probably on the third chapter of TSR Codex II, because I didn't finish it this month, so it's a loose end.
But this week I also plan to relax. I haven't read enough this year. It'd be nice to do some of that. I bought myself the Galaxy Trucker game on Steam, and I've been enjoying its campaign. And as I said, hiking, and swimming.
I used to sometimes think it was a shame that I took a week off during the coldest, most miserable time of the year. Now, that's no longer an issue. Unless it rains a lot. (But it's not looking bad.)