The original concept behind this series of posts is that each week, you would benefit from lessons learned from mymistakes, so that you don’t have to make your own. I went off that plan for a bit by criticizing other people’s mistakes, but after my sporadic holiday posting, I’m back on the original concept. At least for now.

You see, over the holidays, things got hectic chez Cardillo. There was a trip back to O-H-I-O (cold!), roomates moving out (surprise!), my own move (double surprise!), and of course client projects (no surprise there!). All of this meant I got behind on writing these posts, and couldn’t even keep up with my normal weekly schedule. Not even one post per week – weak!

It’s not that I didn’t have ideas for posts. It’s not really even that I got too busy. No, the real reason is that I didn’t execute the part of my plan that involved creating a quiver. A quiver, for a writer, is a set of posts that are pre-created and require little-to-no additional work to post. The kind of content that’s in there ready to go when you only have 5 minutes before you board your flight, or you’re laying sick in bed and can’t summon your creative juices. They are best when they are time-independent thoughts on your topic. Above all, they are useful.

They are not posts that you wrote and didn’t like. They are not posts that you never finished and need to wrap up and edit extensively. They are not time-sensitive topics you never got around to (my gut reaction to Tiger’s “indiscretions” is not a post in the quiver for May 2010). They are definitely not topics that you haven’t written about, but can put together a half-assed post on in 5 minutes.

So, I drained my quiver and never filled it back up. Instead of researching for inspiration in free time and knocking out some posts, I kicked back with a few beers instead of one. I went for a 4 hour ride when only 2.5 was in the works. I tried to find the partners to the single socks that appear after I do laundry. Anything but doing my bloody job.

So, dear reader, I’m back on it. Even though it’s a hectic time of year, I’m only having one beer, keeping the rides short, and leaving those single socks lonely – all to make sure there’s a full quiver of lessons from my mistakes. If I do it right, you’ll never know when I’m too busy to write.