April 14, 2012

Rambling Road: Trucking to Traverse City

Sunset
Sunset on Grand Traverse Bay
Since it is officially official, and I made it through my first entire week, I am ready to reveal the details on the recent change at my day job.  This is relevant to this blog only in the fact that it does have some affect on it.  I have a new route!  I now drive to beautiful Traverse City, MI everyday.  From my home terminal, it is a mere two and a half hour drive (minimum) to my first stop each day.  In the week and a half that I’ve been on this route, I’ve been averaging about 10 or 11 stops per day.  With the added drive time, my work days have been about 11 hours each day.  I couldn’t be happier, as I thoroughly enjoy the peaceful drive up and down US-131.  It doesn’t hurt either that the Traverse City area is one of the most beautiful in Michigan’s lower peninsula.


How the Route Change Affects this Blog
My former route was to Kalamazoo, MI, which is only about an hour south of Grand Rapids (where my home terminal is located).  An hour drive is basically a hop, skip and a jump for a truck driver.  I could do that route all week long on only 5 to 6 hours of sleep each night.  I had made it a habit to get up at 5:30 every morning to work on the blog, even though my start time at work was 10:30.  All of that work paid off, as the blog has progressed to my satisfaction.  I pretty much have a system down now, and I’ve been able to push out some pretty decent content.

With the route change, I am no longer comfortable with letting myself be a little bit tired during the day.  Driving an 18-wheeler for two and a half hour stretches while struggling to keep your eyes open is not fun.  It’s also a little bit dangerous.  My new start time is 9:30, and I’ve been letting myself sleep in until 6:30.  You do the math... I have almost 2 hours less each day during the week to do blog stuff.

I’ve been trying to prioritize and focus on doing the things I need to do to run this blog before I spend time visiting other blogs.  If this blog ever starts to make some decent money, I will definitely look into hiring a virtual assistant to do some of the tedious time consuming tasks.  For now though, I am still going it alone.  I am going to make a serious effort to allocate more of my weekend time to writing.  In a perfect world, I will have my two or three posts for the week done and scheduled before Monday morning.  This way, my time during the week can be spent promoting, replying to comments, and visiting other blogs.

Podcasting Down Rambling Road
An added bonus to my added drive time each day is all of the added time I now have to listen to podcasts!  Except for when the Detroit Tigers are playing a day game, all I’ve listened to between Grand Rapids and Traverse City have been podcasts.


Average Joe and the Other Guy are really getting into a groove with their podcast, The Worst of The Free Financial Advisor.  Episode 4 was entertaining as the roundtable had a bit of a disagreement around the topic of debt.  PK, from DQYDJ.net, somehow finagled himself into having his own segment on the show!  It is quickly becoming my favorite.  Check out episode 4 for the top 5 stupidest ways to spend your income tax refund.


I recently blew through some iTunes and Amazon gift cards by purchasing books.  I bought two audio books from iTunes and two Kindle books from Amazon.  Of the four books, three of them were by Andy Andrews.  I recently finished reading his most recent release, How Do You Kill 11 Million People? via Kindle.  It is a very short read (only about 20 minutes) and highly recommended by me.  The reason I am mentioning this here is because I stumbled upon Andy Andrews podcast, In The Loop, while I was shopping in iTunes.  I am certain that after you read one of his books, you will want to purchase the rest.  His podcast is a perfect compliment to his books, as he gives you some behind-the-scenes information into his life and his writing.


The BlogCastFM podcast is still one of my favorites, and I still listen to at least one episode every day.  A lot to catch up on with more than 2 years worth of valuable content in their archives.


I found another blogging and niche site related podcast called Adsense Flippers.  I’ve listened to a few episodes so far and really like what I am hearing.  Add them to my rotation!

Rambling Road: 2 Weeks Ending 04.14.12
Even with my limited time to read and comment on other blogs, I have managed to browse through a few.  I try to quickly scan through some of the posts in my RSS reader when I have any down time at work (waiting to get loaded or unloaded).  Side note to fellow bloggers: Sorry if I didn’t leave a comment on one of your posts.  It is challenging, time-consuming and annoying to do on a phone.  I also occasionally check The Twitter to see if people are talking about any good posts that I need to read.  Here are some of my favorites from the past two weeks:

Carnivals and Mentions
Penny Thots
Last, but not least, I need to tell you about a brand new site.  JT, who runs Cash Flow Mantra and Grand Per Month has started another multi-contributor site! I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the contributors. Go check out Penny Thots and my first publication on the site, What if Stocks Were Sold at a Gas Pump?  I wrote this post several weeks in advance.  Ironically, the day it got published the stock market dropped like a rock, with the Dow falling over 200 points.

This site is going to be epic and I am really looking forward to watching, and being a part of, its development and success.  Go check it out.  There have already been several great posts!

Have a great weekend everybody.  I hope we run into each other again on Rambling Road!
Posted by
Labels: ,

ShareThis
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...