I’ve posted on numerous occassions that I run this blog, along with the rest of my websites as a part time job on the side. It has always been my goal to do it as a full time living, but I’m still not there yet. Obviously the benefits to working for yourself on a full time basis are numerous but what sticks out in my mind as the best part is the extra time you have in the day to work on your projects. You can see why by reading what a typical day looks like for me:

1. Get up at 6:04 AM and get ready for work
2. Leave at 6:20 AM and head to the train station
3. Get on the train at 6:35 AM that heads north
4. Try to get work done on the terrible train internet connection
– I turn my computer on and bring up my feed reader before I leave my place because most days I never get a connection. I usually just read my RSS feed, but when I have an internet connection I tend to get a lot more done.
5. Arrive in Seattle by 7:20 AM and walk to the bus
6. Get on the bus at 7:28 AM that heads down the Seattle waterfront
7. Get off the bus at 7:42 AM and start walking to work (Enjoy the Seattle waterfront view)
8. Arrive in the office at 7:51 AM and “start the day”
9. Take lunch at noon until 1:00 PM play a couple games of foosball
10. Finish up work by 5:07 PM
11. Leave the building and walk to the bus
12. Get on the bus by 5:18 PM that travels south along the Seattle waterfront
13. Get off the bus at 5:32 PM and walk to the train station
14. Wait ten to fifteen minutes for the southbound train to arrive
15. Log onto the internet as the train departs at 5:55 PM (The internet is better on this train)
– Check email, read RSS feeds, write posts for this blog, do minor administrative tasks for other websites
16. Reach my train stop at 6:40 PM
17. Walk to my truck and head back home
18. Set foot in the door at 6:50 PM
19. Make some food / hang out with my wife Ann
20. Get onto Halo 3 and start doing Halo Lessons at 8:00 PM
21. Turn off my Xbox 360 at around 11:00 PM
22. Finish out the day by doing a few of the following things:
Update the Excel spreadsheet that contains all of the Halo lessons that have been paid for, make lunch for tomorrow, upload any files to my websites, post on various forums (mostly my own)
23. Get into bed by midnight
24. Repeat cycle

So as you can tell by this schedule, I’m either at work or traveling to it for nearly 13 hours every day. Fortunately I am able to use the internet on the train; however, it’s not very good connection especially on the way up. I’m probably going to buy a Verizon wireless card for my laptop so I can get more work done and feel more comfortable logging onto secure websites (rather than using an unsecured wireless connection), but I just haven’t spent the time to research it.

The Halo Lessons portion of my day will probably drop down to about one hour a day soon, but I’ve basically been doing about two to three hours of lessons a day for Halo 3 because of a recent donation to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for $500. My wife is running a marathon in June and has been tasked with raising $4,000 for Leukemia and Lymphoma research as a part of the process. In the month of March I donated all of the money earned from lessons to the cause and a friend of a friend found out about what I was doing. He is a successful guy with a desire to improve his Halo skills so he donated $500 (which was actually doubled because his wife works for Microsoft that has a matching donation program). So I’ve been doing a couple hours a day with him.

/sidetrack

So on average when I’m not doing a lot of Halo lessons I have around three hours a day to hang out with my wife, do more intensive web work, watch movies, be lazy etc. Pretty busy huh?

What’s your work schedule look like? I’d love to read about your day so let me know if you write a post by using the contact form above. Or better yet link back to this post as your inspiration for the post idea 🙂