![\"Orange](\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/orange-leaves.jpg\")
Seven years ago, I was working for an aviation consulting firm.<\/p>\nSeven years ago, I was working for an aviation consulting firm.<\/p>\n
I was regularly traveling to Oregon, helping a client take over my job. (I also traveled to Washington and Georgia (for two months) with that job.)<\/p>\n
On December 17th of that year — shortly before Christmas — I was laid off after the company I helped took over my job. (I didn’t mind.)<\/p>\n
A week later, it was the first white Christmas I ever saw in north Texas. (The first white Christmas my wife — a native Texas — ever saw in north Texas.)<\/p>\n
Seven years later, that job is a couple jobs behind me.\u00a0 (Three, if you consider leaping from one business unit to another at my current company, the first place I’ve worked that I’ve ever truly liked.) I helped save a bank BILLIONS of dollars in fines with my podcasting bud, Shawn Kupfer<\/a>, and I’ve written a lot of online help for hotel billing software as well. (And now with the new department I write…well…kind of the same thing…but with more independence! Tech writing is not the most exciting thing, but I rather love what I’ve been making with the new group!)<\/p>\n In short, life has gotten even better<\/em> since starting this blog.<\/p>\n (The job at the aviation consulting firm seems decades old at this point!)<\/p>\n There’s always a downside if you look deeply enough, right? The downside to all the day job success is I’ve been working on the current novel for way too long<\/a>. While September is the anniversary of this blog and many changes with the day jobs, it’s also the month I committed to a bigger, sweeping story<\/a>. Five years on that is an embarrassment.<\/p>\n I’m normally not hard on myself, but when I mention in blog entries that complacency is a villain to creativity, I kind of mean it.<\/p>\n The good thing is I’ve made mighty fine progress of a second draft of that novel, and I hope that means good things are not far ahead.<\/p>\n I’ve been blogging about writing in one form or another for much longer than seven years.<\/p>\n I will not link to the very old<\/em> websites in which I talked about writing comic books (and shared self-publishing information; in part, because I’m having a hard time finding it all with a basic search), but I’m coming up on 25 years of blogging about writing. (Blogging even well before there were blogs, handling all updates and archives manually.)<\/p>\n But it’s The Juggling Writer<\/em> that matters most to me because it’s been the most focused — and resulted in a good handful of friendships with writers who have become good online friends over the years.<\/p>\n Last year’s 6th year post was the 500th post by design. By total coincidence, this post is the 550th Juggling Writer post.<\/p>\n I have no idea how many posts will come in the next year, but for those who have been reading all along: thank you so damn much!<\/p>\n To a new year of great writing for us all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seven years ago, I was working for an aviation consulting firm. I was regularly traveling to Oregon, helping a client take over my job. (I also traveled to Washington and Georgia (for two months) with that job.) On December 17th of that year — shortly before Christmas — I was laid off after the company […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6754"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6760,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754\/revisions\/6760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Downside<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Seven Years<\/strong><\/h2>\n