This weekend I sent off the final file for the final project for the final client of Avenue Z Writing Solutions. Yep. That’s it. I retired from the copywriting biz to write more books and make a living speaking around the country. Or something. I haven’t really convinced myself that being a full-time author and speaker will pay the bills, but I’m jumping off the cliff to give it a try.

Strangely enough, the move comes almost four years to the day since I quit my sales job in a tearful phone call to my boss. “I can’t do this anymore!” I wailed. And when I got off the phone, I said, “Uh oh. Now what?” I was daunted by the idea of looking for a real job (even before the economy tanked), so I decided the easiest thing to do would be to start my own writing business.

It was very, very tough to make the phone calls to those clients, many of whom I’ve had almost since the beginning. It took me several months to finish all the work in progress, and when I pushed the send button on Sunday, there were a couple of tears.

So, here I am again starting completely from scratch on a new career I know very little about. That’s not exactly true because I’ve been booking speaking gigs for about three years, plus the first book is in the bag (and on the shelf — check it out!). But I have to create new marketing techniques, new online strategies, new connections — really a whole new identity.

So before I begin a new chapter, I thought I’d share a pictorial look back at the last four years of Avenue Z:

Now… on to the future as Your Nerdy Best Friend!

I love all my little free tech tools and gadgets, but things break. I have a pro version of Xobni that isn’t hooking up with my account, so it only shows the free version. My Live Mesh file system is blocked by an antivirus program on my laptop, so the files don’t update. And I have a tangled mess of keyboards and mice on my desk because I bought some fancy-schmancy systems that use  bluetooth, and then the bluetooth got hosed up.

So I have all these little efficient things in place that are no longer efficient. This has produced a series of complicated little workarounds that are just downright annoying and time consuming. I’m using a wired keyboard and mouse, and I have to plug them into a USB hub that I use for a thousand things. So I’m forever unplugging one and replugging. And don’t get me started on the printer issues. Because we lost the wireless set up for one of our printers, I pretty much have to go to Kinkos to print something in color from the house.

I’d bet money that you have situations like this in your business…. little roadblocks that you’ve learned to work around instead of fixing. It would probably take half an hour to fix the Live Mesh thing, but instead I take an extra 5 minutes to wrangle files from computer to computer each time I need to sync something. If you add up the time I’m spending, it would be 30 minutes several times over.

Broken technology and little roadblocks are annoying, time-wasting and inefficient. So why don’t we feel like we can take the time to fix this stuff? When I go to print something, I sigh and get grumpy. I do my little workaround and promise myself I’ll fix the problem “soon.” Yet “soon” doesn’t come, and I keep cussing and dealing.

What’s on your business get-around-to-it list? I propose we all set aside Thursday, May 26, as Fix-It Day. Add a comment with a list of the little things you need to fix, and we’ll all commit to setting aside time May 26 (or before) to resolving those little irritations.

Who’s with me?

Ever feel like your life will *really* get started if X happens? For me the X factor is the purchase of an area rug.

Let me explain. A couple of months ago I decided to give up my ocean-view office to move my headquarters into the house. Originally I had moved into a real office to increase my productivity. The off-site office worked wonderfully for a while until I figured out how to find as many distractions there as I did at home. So I decided to save myself a few hundred dollars a month and revamp my home office.

Our poor home office has undergone several changes in the last few years. When I moved in to D.J.’s house, he let me take it over, and I rearranged his big, wooden lawyer furniture to give it a little softer look. Then when I moved out, we moved in a twin bed for a while to accommodate extra company. Then D.J. sold his practice to a larger firm and took the office back over. But he didn’t really use it, so here I am again.

I have big dreams for this room that I sit in for 8-10 hours a day. I have a glorious blank wall to play with, and an unlimited imagination about things I can do. But so far all I’ve done is move one of the big, heavy desks to another side of the room and put up some gauzy orange curtains I’ve had for years.

In my mind, all I need to really make this room into *my* office is to find the perfect area rug. Something bright and cheery with flowers, or maybe a coffee cup, or perhaps even a cupcake! Yes! And once I find this rug, it’ll help me decorate the big, blank wall. It’ll help me determine what cute desk accessories would look best. It’ll make me feel at home.

So sometimes I get lost rug shopping. I can easily spend an hour or two searching Overstock.com or craigslist. I just get obsessed about finding THE PERFECT RUG that will ignite the completion of the office. Sometimes I find a rug that will probably do… but then I dismiss it because it has one too many flowers, or I flinch at the price (a perfect rug should cost about $25, right? Sigh). So I never buy my rug, and I sit in this office that I don’t consider fully formed.

To me this is a metaphor for other decisions in our lives. How many times have you told yourself that as soon as you lose a little weight you’ll really go out there and meet someone new? Or maybe you think all you need is to take the time to REALLY write a good resume, and then you’ll go after that great job. We sit around waiting for some little thing to happen to transform our lives (or our offices) into something more than it is. And in the meantime, life (and work) keep happening.

I know I’m not the first one to write on this subject — probably not even the one millionth one — but I think I need to look around me and accept this office as my own and get on with my life/career.

So, what’s your area rug?

In about 24 hours, I’ll be loading up the car to drive to Palm Springs to crank out the book.

Believe it or not, I am ready. I am prepared. I am exactly where I want to be. This weekend, I synthesized four complicated databases into one, categorized (and subcategorized) more than 200 free and bargain online tools, created a mail merge template, sorted the tools by category, then merged the data into 9 chapters.

Now I need to calmly, coolly, methodically work through the tools in each chapter to produce the nuts and bolts of the book. As I write, I’m going to keep a running list of the tasks that need to be completed in the 2 weeks after I return from the trip, and my assistant and I are on track to click through them to turn the thing in before the deadline.

Holy crap. It’s working.

When I say “believe it or not,” I expect many of you may not believe it. My mother is amazed I didn’t just rush into this and get overwhelmed. I am pretty sure my father has a pool going at his work on whether or not I’ll pull this off. And I’m kind of flabbergasted that I’ve made a plan and am sticking to it.

I expect the next week to be a bitch. It’ll be boring, grinding, exhausting. There’s nothing inherently fun about pounding out page after page after page with a concrete deadline staring at you.

I’m probably not going to dress much. I’m going to sit in a dark condo with just the computer screen glowing. I’m going to keep weird hours, eat unappetizing food, panic that I’m not going to finish, take for granted that I will and waste some time. Oh, and there will be chocolate. You can bet on that. And as soon as I get there, I’ll use Layar, a free tool that people recommended, to map out the location of the nearest cupcakes.

The reason I’m escaping is so that I don’t have to be a girlfriend, a runner, a copywriter, a daughter, a friend or even a friendly human being for the week. I’m going to morph into a moody, intense writer with a sole purpose: finish. the. book.

Although I am dreading the grind somewhat, I’m so excited I can hardly wait for my adventure to begin. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I think it’s going to work. Everything else about my plan to write this book in three months has gone well, and I have no reason to doubt that I can pull this off. Ok, I actually have a THOUSAND doubts, but no real logic behind them!

Woohoo! Off I go….