Heyaa
Itās Sunday again. And Iām typing covered in a shawl. Winter has arrived. Oh! I love it. Mostly because I donāt get all sweaty and sticky. Not even in the glowing noon.
Itās evening, by the way. 7.16 PM. 19.16. I love the 24-hour clock more than the 12-hour format. Maybe because I donāt have to add that extra AM/PM. Yeah, I find little, efficient tricks to be lazy anywhere, everywhere.
For the last two days, I have been particularly lazy. So, got late in writing this.
Had some client work too. But I got late mostly because I got addicted to this lively, cute game where I was a food-preneur. From the lemonade level, I reached the drive-thru level within two days; earning trillions and trillions (presumably dollars). Then, I uninstalled it.
Now, I am back to my productive self like I wasā¦ the entire week.
Oh, wait! A song.
Iām listening to a bit of 90s romance these days. Some original songs, some unplugged versions. The current one on loop is:
So, yeah. Back to productive days.
Two weeks ago, I took up a new client project on a friendās referral. And itās been keeping me on my toes. Oh, I wish I could say that literallyā¦ on my toes.
I have never been on my toes. Maybe as a kid, I had. But I donāt recall. My fragile little toes would have sprained for sure.
Oh, snap!
So, I have been working on this new project almost non-stopā¦ morning through evening. And taking breaks in between to work on others and my own.
Raised my first invoiceā¦ for the little work I completed in November.
And along with the payment, I received my first feedback, too. āI really like your writing style.ā Not bad, eh?
Iām yet to adapt my day to this new workload. But I found time to squeeze in some of my own projects. And during the weekā¦ first of all, I updated my list of book recommendations with this yearās reads.
Published a recommendation article to my book blogā¦ and also updated the books to four other categorised recommendation articles. Oooh, it was intense. A marathon-like.
But in between all this, Iām going through a reader's block. I havenāt read a book in December. The last two books I opened, I didnāt feel like reading.
My overall book read count is lower than the previous yearās. And this phoenix is now looking for resurrection.
Itās not that I donāt have books. I have 40+ paperbacks waiting on the shelf and around 400 stored in my Kindle. Itās just that I donāt feel like opening them.
Most of those books arenāt recommendations from anyone. So, you see, opening one would be like gambling. I might like it. I might not. And right now, Iām like, I waaaaaant to like the next book I read.
I donāt even want a recommendation right now. I know one book among those would be the right one for the current moment. I just donāt know which one.
By the way, Giphy has been a good boy for the past few weeks. GIF pages are loading almost instantly.
Only around two months ago, I was looking for ways to understand why the GIF results load so slow. And whamā¦ Giphy did something about it.
OK, where was I?
Ahhh, a productive week.
I get lost in conversation. Textual conversation. Typing jitni karwa lo, not an issue. (no matter how much typing you want me to do, not an issue.)
Earlier this evening, I was wondering if there was a platform where I could market and grow my merch store with this blabbering.
LinkedIn?
Yeah, LinkedIn. I liked it once. 5 years ago. Now, I donāt feel like using it.
I tried Instagram recently. You know, right? Reel-ing just isnāt for me. I tried for 3 months almost.Ā
Now, Iāve been thinking of running ads instead. Thinking for the last two months.
Last month, I was discussing something around it with Anmol when he shared a few ads he ran once for a side project.
This was one that caught my attention.
And you know what Anmol said?
This ad was actually the best-performing. Why not? Short, to-the-point copy and clean graphic. No fluff. No screaming heads. No dimming and glowing lights.
Iāll keep my ad copy short. Just like it is in the screenshot. Iām yet to make graphics for the ads, though. Pushing it to the next day every day.
Argh, I spiraled in the moment again.
Back to āproductive week.ā
This week, I completed a long pending work. I put my old lazywriter blog up again.
Hereā¦ blog.lazywriter.in
Still needs touchups, I know. For better presentability. But the content is at least up again.
I needed to set it up. It has some good pieces of portfolio content.
My site was made with WordPress earlier, hosted on Bluehost. And updating content through it was such a pain. So, I scraped off the site 6+ months ago.
If my Book Blabber site was on WordPress, I couldnāt have blogged regularly. WordPress has been painfully slow for me.
Now that I have it on Publii, I feel a bit at ease. Itās fast, of course. And itās free.
Set it up with free Netlify hosting, So the only thing I have to pay for is my domain. ā¹2-3K every 3 years. Affordable? Yes, it is.
I did the same thing with my lazywriter blog. Itās, too hosted on Publii now. Wasted ā¹10,000 before going abso-frugal-lutely.
So, that was all that happened in the past week.
My main portfolio is on Carrd as a landing page. I renew it every year during Black Friday for around ā¹600-700. With that little investment, Iām hosting 6-7 landing pages (can host up to ten).
The week was one heck of a ride. And Iām expecting nothing less this week, too.
I have to update a bunch of old book articles and then look at the search performance of the recently published ones.Ā
Iām entering 2024 swamped with work.
Itās 21.10 now. 9.10 PM. Only two hours since I started writing this newsletter. I think evenings are definitely turning out to be more productive for me.
Will take your leave now.
Bidding adieu.
Live long and prosper.
See you next week, with another story.