Manufacturing guy-at-large.

What I'm working on

Added on by Spencer Wright.

Apropos of keeping myself accountable, here are a few things that are on my plate and in my mind at the moment:

  • Doing a good job writing The Prepared’s newsletter. I’m on the hook for personally writing about half of the newsletter’s issues this year, and I want to take advantage of that as much as possible.

  • Doing a good job managing guest editors for the newsletter. The newsletter has historically been a solo project, and I’m intensely aware that the onus is on me to communicate a standard of quality to everyone now involved in it - a task that I know I’m doing an imperfect job at.

  • Refining the public-facing definition of The Prepared’s Paid Subscriptions, and finding more effective (and non-sleazy) ways of getting more people to join the program. Paid subscribers provide me more psychological payoff than anything else I do professionally, and the program is also a significant portion of The Prepared’s business model. However, I haven’t done a particularly good job at communicating what the purpose of the program is or why readers would want to join it - something I definitely need to change.

  • Writing elsewhere. I’ve started and abandoned multiple posts here this year, and generally have not done a good job finding topics and outlets on which I can maximize my impact per word written. Part of this is understandable - it’s good that the newsletter is my primary focus - but it would be good for me to get more reps writing in longer form and for more varied audiences.

  • Affiliations. I’ve built myself a good little kingdom, but it would be good for me to find ways to involve myself with larger institutions. This is vague, but feels like it’ll be increasingly important and self-affirming in the coming phases of my career.

  • I really need to find ways to get more exercise. In 2011, I kind of flipped a switch on my health and, over the course of a year, lost about 50 lbs. But it required a ton of mental energy and a huge amount of time out of my week - something that, as a self employed person with a family, feels a little out of reach today. I need to find some kind of middle ground here, especially as I age and my kids become more physical.

  • Other projects. I like writing for a living, but it works best when I’m also doing other random shit - building a table, writing a little software, refurbishing a machine, editing someone else’s original research. These kinds of things have been particularly hard to take on during the shutdown, and moving forward it’s probably a good idea for me to schedule them out in a more rigorous way - perhaps at a rate of one project a quarter, or similar.

  • Prepare myself for something bigger and more meaningful. I want to find a measurable positive impact that I can make on the world and my community, ideally related to sustainability and/or economic development. And while I’m crazy proud of how The Prepared has grown to be a voice for good stuff, it mostly lacks the direct action that I’d like to have in my life.

Also: Being a good partner to Ada; showing my kids how interesting the world is and preparing them for being a part of it; being a better neighbor; finding ways to make my neighborhood more bike and pedestrian friendly; etc.