GHDR Report 1212: A Strong Finish to the Year

⊕ show captionAbout the image // The Month of Building went well. I revisited many old interests and skills, reskilling and updating them as they went. I found myself looking at my bookshelf which is stocked with books from past versions of me; for the first time in a long while they are connecting with me again!

With December comes the last Groundhog Day Resolutions (GHDR) Report of the year! This has been one of the more successful GHDR runs I can remember, as it started with a clear question for which I tried various experiments that I thought might provide answers.

I won't go into the entire GHDR arc in this report—that's for a year-end summary I'll post in January—but will instead talk about how The Month of Building went.

The Big Starting Questions

After losing the source of my freelance contracts, I was not sure that I could effectively put all my planning for a rebooted design business into action. I also knew from past GHDR efforts that maintaining momentum by myself might not be sustainable, but I did know that I had done several 30-day challenges ten years ago and had liked it! The Month of Building was designed as an experiment to gather data related to questions like these:

1. Could I maintain pace and produce every day?
2. Could I apply recent coding experience from the freelance work to my own products?
3. Could I relearn graphic design skills on unfamiliar new software?
4. Would I have the energy to write a blog post after a day of working?
5. Would I produce work that was worth sharing?
6. Would my 2010 blogging skills work?

I thought I was up to the task, but not to what extent I was prepared for it. Pushing a 30 Day Challenge would force me to adapt quickly on-the-fly, and the daily posting would force accountability on me.

How Did it Go?

I thought it went very well. I have done these challenges before, and I found that I was able to pick up old skills with new tools without too much trouble. The previous 18 years of GHDR Resolutions has given me experience that helps me handle anti-productivity quirks with kindness and understanding. What is new is the acceptance that doing stuff takes a long time and I was ready to accept the assignment to see what would happen.

Here's the gist of what I got done. The index of posts in the margin notes will take you directly to the matching blog posts.

FREELANCE DESIGN

• I replaced Adobe Illustrator with Affinity Designer for pre-press work (PDFs for commercial printing)
• I replaced Adobe Lightroom with ON1 Photo Raw 2025 to process raw photos.
• I replaced Adobe Photoshop with Affinity Photo to create blog images and title pictures.
• I designed new personal business cards and reactivated my print reseller account with 4Over and a couple other ones, then ordered cards.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

• I wrote code to autogenerate the Word Counting Calendar, reducing the production time by a factor of 100!
• I made a cheat sheet for PDF-LIB so I could wrap my head around its capabilities.

PRODUCT CREATION

• I resurrected the 365 Day ETP Journal generator and produced a new edition for Patreon subscribers.
• I ordered 1000 units of ETP 5885 Half-size Notebooks, paid for them, and stuck some of them on Amazon Marketplace using their new Warehouse and Distribution system for the first time.
• I cleaned-up and packaged library code I used for past freelance projects to share with others.

ENERGY MANAGEMENT

• I evolved a more efficient blogging style and format for the challenge posts, including image selection and processing. I also simplified my writing voice, which helped.
• I took my energy lapses in stride, declaring skip days for when I had to take a break from the month of building to see friends, go to the doctor, etc. I took a whole week off for Thanksgiving.
• I also rediscovered that working for more than three weeks without a break will lead to burnout and dysregulation, so I'll be mindful of that in the next burst of activity.
• I dug into my old code and noted how much technical debt exists in it. This will have to be addressed in the future, but I didn't let that stop me in the present.

COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS & DOCUMENTED IDEAS

• I refined the Activity Bingo Board which helps me see what tasks I should or could be focused for both personal and financial growth.
• I wrote two cultural architecture documents: Articulating Friendship to describe what I think friendship is like in a supportive environment, and Mythical Magical Adventure Cat which establishes "Sri Lore" for desirable personal expression.
• I started an experimental freelancer channel in DS|CAFE, in which only freelancers are allowed to post (non-freelancers can read and react only).

It is really weird to see a list of accomplishments like this and forget how uncertain and improvisational each day was. If you read the original posts, you can get a sense of my actual mood. Now that it's all in the past, it looks...pretty good!

I answered a lot of questions!

• YES, I can work and blog at the same time
• YES, an emergent approach to choose what to do works fine if I use the Activity Bingo Board to choose aligned interests
• YES, I can trust myself to find reasonable solutions when I peck exploratively at new tasks
• YES, I can do sustained self-directed work on my own software projects
• YES, I need to shift between projects every two weeks
• YES, I've internalized a lot of ADHD and ASD trait mitigation and applied it effectively during my work

I feel more assured that I can apply the "30 Day Building Protocol" to help me re-establish a business. For example:

1. A 30-day recent body of work adds to credibility as a freelance designer, developer, or combination thereof.
2. Using show don't tell engagement does the work of selling for me by giving people something they can evaluated against their own needs on their own.
3. My assuredness in applying multi-domain knowledge in experimental process demonstrates confidence and independence

I've also assurred myself that all the months of planning weren't a waste of time:

• The Activity Bingo Board is exquisitely tuned to my carefully modeled understanding of needs. Because I trust the board, I don't worry that I'm wasting time.
• My practice managing emotional regulation and energy paid off. I handled stressors with understanding and self compassion, using the theory behind my neurodivergent cognitive traits to inform my actions without guilt.

The Month of Building provides additional affirmation for the following theories I have for myself:

• I work best by focusing on making Concrete Deliverables.
• When I can control or negotiate the expectations, this gives me the freedom to be focused and productive to produce a concrete deliverable.
• I can trust myself to see the patterns and seek the best available path, because my experimental data-driven epimestic process keeps me honest.

Takeaways?

I proved I could follow-through with my self-issued challenge, and that's a huge achievement to me!

But...

While it looks like there's a lot of things that got done, it's experimental. It's not built for sustained business practice. There are legal and financial arrangements to make. There are services to design and offer. There are entire e-commerce workflows that I have yet to design and implement. And somehow, I'm supposed to keep this all under control while actively engaged with regular blogging and community management. Each one of these is potentially a full time job in itself!

Next Steps

I have to look at the year as a whole, and identify the most rewarding subset of activities I can comfortably manage that also provide sustaining income so I can live. I have to reserve a lot of energy for being joyful in my creative work and running cheery communities, as these are critical for my emotional regulation and motivation.

I don't know what that specifically looks like, but perhaps it will become clear when I write the GHDR 2025 Year End Summary sometime in January.

That concludes this report! Thanks for following along!

INDEX of GHDR 2025 POSTS