That shiny picture is of a Shuttle SD39P2, a computer that I’ve had for a few months now – I requested parts from Intel, Kingston, Western Digital, and of course Shuttle. Through a series of frustrating circumstances – defective hardware, problems with getting the parts I needed, then problems getting it all working – the article took months to complete. My own lack of motivation also played a role because at the start, I had such high hopes to get a comprehensive review out fast. I had contacted Intel, Western Digital, Plextor, XFX, Kingston – a bunch of companies, all giving them an outline of what I was doing and when it would be finished. Then it all fell apart…and as a writer, I tend to get de-motivated at writing when things fall apart. That starts a very negative cycle where because things went bad, I don’t want to write, and the longer I don’t write, the worse I feel about not finishing the writing project…and so it goes.
In the past year, I’ve had some products for review where I’ve had the product for eight months and still not written about it – it’s only recently (in the past two months) that I’ve gritted my teeth and blasted through some of those outstanding reviews. As embarrassing as it is to email a vendor eight months after receiving a product and telling them the review is finally finished, it’s better than looking at a table full of review products and feeling guilty that I haven’t written about them. Oh, the tortured soul of the geek tech blogger. 😉
At any rate, on Sunday I gritted my teeth and spent 12 hours working on my article on building a monster media editing machine, and 5654 words later, it’s all finished and published. What a great feeling to get it out the door! Now if only I can apply the same level of determination to the other articles on my To Do list…