Now I'm Really in Trouble

I know what I want to do. The job/money thing. I know what I want, and that is a terrible thing, because now I really need to act on it. That will require work, effort. It will not fall into my lap like a ripe plum. It's also going to take time, and may never pay off. But this is it. This is my thing, and I can't believe I didn't come up with it earlier, when I was kicking around other ideas (Etsy store, Ebay, making Photo Books for people). The German classes, I'm still going to move forward with, because that is relatively easy, I do have (hopefully) something of a market for it, and it can move fairly quickly once I get rolling.

I had my dreadful epiphany Monday morning, while looking through this WHAM-IT! document. (I still haven't finished reading the whole thing, such as the part about actually getting traffic to your site, but I'm still a little overwhelmed by all of it.) I was thinking about what kind of content I could put on a site that would draw people in. What do I know; what am I good at? Well, last November I did a fair bit of blogging about homeschooling, and that seemed to interest a few people, even those that don't home school their own kids. Hey, we all want extra ways to enhance the kids' learning, right?

I also remembered a conversation I had with a homeschooling friend on the way home from a co-op meeting (we joined a co-op, and although the drive will suck, I think the experience is going to be fun). She said that she loved looking at my lesson plans--she's a lot more relaxed about schedules and such. I told her that my schedule was my crutch: without it, nothing would get done. But I do like lesson planning, and even writing materials. Well, mostly. Sometimes I am hugely relieved to get lesson plans that are complete with little to no extra input from me. Since I don't buy a pre-made curriculum, I put the bits and pieces together myself. Generally, I like that flexibility, but sometimes, it's a lot of work.

When I was in college, one of my jobs (my best job ever, in fact) was working at a private reading clinic. One of my jobs was to write new content for the students to work from. I loved it. I loved planning it, writing it, creating the attendant worksheets, etc. We had big dreams of publishing our materials, although that never came to fruition.

But now. The world is a different place now. I can write and publish my own materials online. I've seen other unit studies available, though I've never bought them (I'm way too cheap). This is something that has enormous potential. It is also a potentially huge amount of work. Of course, it doesn't all have to be done right away. It's the sort of thing I can build slowly and accumulate over time. I'm nervous about it, because it means putting myself "out there," and taking a risk. Like I said, it's also going to be effort, and my plate is pretty full already. But I can't help it. This is my thing.

I'm going to make it happen.