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!

We’re giving away 10 copies of the book on Goodreads, complete with a cupcake magnet and other goodies!

Enter to win the chance to be one of the first reviewers: bit.ly/U2Fgoodreadsgive

Yeah, the day sucked. In a nutshell, Contact Us emails from this site and Cheapskate Freelancer were vanishing into cyberspace when they downloaded into Outlook (I saw it happen!). They’d be there on the iPhone, and then when I hit Send/Receive…. POOF. No more email. No more wonderful new tools sent to me from readers. I’ve lost several in the past few days — all that’s left is the small memory I have of seeing on the tiny iPhone screen as I drank coffee in the morning.

But the bigger mystery here is not the emails… it’s the dependence we have on these little black boxes. How did this become the center of my world?

And another important question… when has it NOT been the center of my world?

For most of my adult life I’ve held jobs that revolved around these little things. I really can’t imagine what I would sit at a desk and stare at if I didn’t have these monitors. What a different world it must have been where you sat at a desk and could look unencumbered across the room to other people at desks. And perhaps those people attended meetings where everyone looked at the speaker, not down at a hand cupped over a BlackBerry.

At any rate, I spent the morning cussing at the computer and the afternoon listening to the IT consultant, who blamed my fondness for free and low-cost tech tools on the slow demise of my lovely HP Pavilion. Looks like she’ll be put out to pasture soon (remember the story of how she got here?). The fact that she’s acting up during crunch time for the book is akin to being dumped during finals week in college. But I’ll be making the switch to a new machine soon, and again the black anchor will be at my feet to keep me at the desk.

Your turn… what was the last job you had that didn’t involve a computer?

As of this morning, I’ve written (drum roll, please):

175 words.

Um. Yeah. You read that right. I’ve written 175 words of what will probably be 35-40,000. That means I’m about .05% finished with the writing. And that word count kind of includes the title.

I know. You’re thinking, “Holy crap, Ziesenis. What the hell have you been doing?” Believe it or not, I am exactly on schedule for this thing. For one of the first times in my life, I didn’t just jump into the middle of a project and start writing it from both ends. I created two databases (using low-cost favorite SurveyMonkey) to collect data from the owners of the free and low-cost tools. With the help of my assistant, I’ve contacted about 275 vendors of tools to ask them to fill out the survey, and so far about 75 people have provided clear, concise and critical data to allow me to write up their products. By Thursday I will identify all the important tools that have not yet filled out a survey, and my assistant will visit their websites to find the missing information to enter into the database.

Next week we will download the survey database and do a massive mail merge, placing each tool with all the supporting info on its own Microsoft Word page. The tools will have comments from friends, the descriptions I’ve already written on Cheapskate Freelancer (if available) and all the information I need to methodically clean up and finalize each entry. My writing retreat is the following week, and I’ll hunker down and plow through the tools one by one, then group them into chapters, create a quick reference guide for each chapter, then finalize. After I come back from my retreat, Claire and I have about two weeks to fill in the holes that I will inevitably discover.

I gotta tell you, I’m proud of myself for being this methodical. Usually I’d kind of panic and jump right in, taking one tool and trying to grab info from here and there and everywhere to get it onto one page. I know for a fact that this would take me much longer than the way I’m doing it, and it would be frustrating and exhausting, and I’d feel like I was making mistakes and leaving stuff out. When one paints a room, one should always take the extra time to prep the room by taping off the edges, laying down the dropcloth, moving the furniture. Usually I’m so excited that I just open the can (after barely shaking it, not stirring it) and dip a paintbrush and go from the closest wall right in the middle. Now I’m proud that I’m taking the time necessary to prep the room so that the next step goes easier.

Yet, I fear that the next step will be harder than I imagine. What if each page takes 20 minutes instead of 7? What if the mail merge doesn’t work and I have to cut and paste everything by hand? What if I haven’t left enough time? Or I have a breakdown, or ….

Yeah, well. I have to plan the work and work the plan, and, as of today, the plan is on schedule. As they say, that’s my story.

On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.

After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post….

We are all shaken here at TechCrunch – this is someone who was our friend and who we trusted to be honest with our readers. Our hope is that the intern learns something from this experience and grows into the kind of person that will be more welcome in this community.

I apologize to each one of you. I promise that we will always maintain complete transparency with you on how we operate, even when it isn’t such an easy thing to do.

TechCrunch discovers and reveals the latest technology news, products and services. I’m sure they’re offered goodies all the time, and their policy is to turn everything down (or at least I think it is — perhaps they accept products to try them out for review). But in general, there is much discussion about the ethics of accepting free products or services in exchange for a review.

In case you haven’t heard, I’m writing a book of reviews of my favorite free and low-cost online tools. Now I, too, have to deal with an onslaught of free offers. I have written to more than 100 companies to ask them for information about their products, and multitudes — scores, even! — have written back to offer me free upgrades to the full versions, etc. Oh, the temptations!

Ok, I’m lying. There have been only three. But I’ve accepted them all. (Ok, four if you count that a client of mine who has a tool offered me an upgraded account for life.) Should I turn them down? My reasoning is that I should be able to evaluate the full version and tell readers whether the upgrade is worth the money. The funny thing is that if I feel like an upgrade is worth the money (and the money is still what I would consider a bargain), I’ll upgrade myself if it’s a tool I’m likely to use a lot. I’m all for supporting cool tools and compensating those people who add such value to my life. But, of course, I can’t upgrade on everything, even if I love it. That would make it impossible for me to wear the “Cheapskate Freelancer” crown.

But between me and you, I bet everyone who offered me an upgrade will make it into the book. Although I hope this isn’t true, I may feel a certain level of obligation to them.

So, my questions are for you, dear readers… do you think less of a company that offers to upgrade or give something for free (none of them have asked me to do anything special)? Do you think I should turn them down? Would you consider my book biased if you knew I received upgrades? Should I simply disclose it in the intro (which no one ever reads, right?)? Or perhaps just mention in the write up that “the owner upgraded my account so I could take a look around the full version”?

Oh, and another issue… people are already asking me for free copies of my book. How should I handle this delicately? I get a certain number of free copies, but the rest I have to buy at a fairly modest discount. I’ll be doing giveaways with the book, but I can’t possibly gift it to all my colleagues. Yet I’ll feel a little silly asking people to pay for it. Dilemmas, dilemmas. Oh, the problems of famous authors, right?

Note to vendors who want to bribe me: For clarification, I will write anything you want if you buy me cupcakes.

As always, I’m amazed at people’s generosity. Strangers bid me welcome into their houses, asked me to sit and rummaged through their cupboards. It was pitch black outside, and they didn’t know me from anybody, yet with little effort on my part I collected 4 bags of canned goods.

In one home, a woman invited me to sit as she searched for donations, even though she assured me she had given and given and given and probably had nothing left. “But I don’t want to send you away empty handed,” she said.

I chatted with her and her daughter for a while, and then the woman’s eyes lit up. “Oh goodness. I’m helping you, and maybe you can help me!” she said when I handed her my card. “You are a speaker, right? Well I run a group, and we need speakers every month….”

Lo and behold, I landed a speaking gig! Ok, so it’s a talk to the octogenarians at the Ladies’ Friendship Circle at the nearby Presbyterian church, but still!  The president said I’d probably be bigger than their bingo nights! Almost every time I go out to give a presentation, I end up with more business and more speaking engagements. An opportunity is an opportunity.

As the sole employee of Avenue Z Writing Solutions, it’s easy to isolate myself from others. Even though I now have a beautiful office of my own, I still come to work alone, spend most of the day alone and stay in my box. But I’m working to expand my network of business and personal connections. I recently joined a networking group called the San Diego Coastal Professional Group, which is comprised of local business owners of all types (including my new printer, Mario from SDPrint.com). We meet for breakfast once every two weeks to share education, encourage referrals and, well, eat breakfast. The dues for the group are minimal, and I’m hoping my efforts will really pay off. I want to put down deeper roots here in San Diego, both for myself and my business. And almost every time I reach out, I benefit.

PLEASE, please, please  stop by www.avenuezfooddrive.com to pledge to give to a local food bank. We’re looking for FOUR TONS of food donations to food banks around the world!

“I have a business card crisis,” I announced. “I am trying to print my new cards with the new logo, and two printers have produced disappointing results. See, this one is too flimsy, and this one was cut too small. And I have 1000 of each! Don’t you think I need to redo them?”

Mario paused, thinking for a moment. “Yes, this one’s a little thin. And it’s so strange that these cards are so small, but honestly — and I don’t mean to talk myself out of a sale — honestly, you’re just being too picky.”

Too picky? Didn’t he see that the cards were not PERFECT? Couldn’t he tell that I was ready to pay yet more money to make everything EXACTLY the way I had imagined it?

Mario continued, “I know these little things mean a lot to you, but frankly, no one else will care. It’s a business card. It holds your information. These are both perfectly acceptable, and I’m sure you can think of better ways to invest in your business that will pay off more than this.”

Ahhh. Mario is indeed wise. Although my new business cards are not PERFECT, not one recipient would look at them and say, “Wow. Bad cards. I’m never calling her.” If I hadn’t talked to Mario, I would have gone to yet a third discount online printer to try to improve on the cards, and I would have ended up with another 1000.

Things I learned this morning:

1. Experts are helpful.
   Talking to Mario and benefiting from his years of experience, I saved myself time and hassle, not to mention more money. Thank you, Mario! (Plus, by talking me out of these cards, he probably earned himself another sale the next time I need to print something.)
2. It’s easy to lose perspective.
   As Mario pointed out — these are just business cards. You get them. You give them. Some stand out. Some don’t. It’s just no big deal.
3. Perfection is tough to find.
   The whole logo and site redesign started because I ran out of the old business cards. I needed to update my address and add other services to my site. Thus began a complete redesign that took several weeks, about a thousand bucks and a whole lot of worrying. And I had envisioned the perfect business card to be the culmination of my hard work.
4. Two thousand business cards is a lot.
   My original business card order in 2007 was for a thousand cards. It took me two years to give them all out. Now I have 2000 new cards. Anyone want one? Or a dozen?

We actually corresponded a couple of times in the first month after we met, but I really don’t know Paul. I don’t need to buy anything from Paul. None of the people I know need to buy anything from Paul. But I’ve been getting Paul’s electronic newsletters about once a month for 2 years. And, in today’s world of furious networking, I feel obliged to keep getting Paul’s newsletter. I fear that if I sever the connection to Paul by unsubscribing from his newsletter, I’ll make Paul feel bad, or I’ll miss the opportunity of a lifetime because I no longer have his contact number to make an important connection for my business.

I’ve gotten to the point where his email (which just arrived) in my inbox makes me wince. I haven’t opened one of them in at least 20 editions. They just sit there and make me feel guilty for hating them. Perhaps you have to have grown up in a Catholic family to understand my guilt, but I hope you get the point.

The same goes for other vague connections I’ve made. I receive invitations to become a fan on Facebook for a company whose owner I met once. I get requests to contribute to fundraising for causes I don’t necessarily want to support, sent by people I’ve corresponded with a half dozen times. And I feel an obligation to keep all my connections, to support all efforts by independent people with gumption — because wouldn’t it be great if they supported me?

Is that what social networking today has led to? We’re all running around trying to scratch backs with hopes that we’ll have our backs scratched when we need it. Are we all afraid of losing the ability to be an important spoke in an important hub, so we stretch our network as far as the eye can see and never “defriend” anyone because we may need them later? Or is it just me?

I even feel uncomfortable writing this blog post. What if Paul reads it and recognizes himself? What if a casual connection feels slighted and doubts that I’m a real friend? And a bigger question…. how can I (we) expect to be real friends with everybody? I have 224 connections on LinkedIn, 1907 followers on Twitter and 179 Facebook friends, and I’d consider myself a moderately successful networker. Is this really all necessary to live, work, date and play in today’s society?

(Err… PS — feel free to reach out to me on any of the three networks — the more the merrier at this point, right?)

To defriend someone is to remove him from your list of contacts on MySpace, Facebook or other social networking sites. An ad campaign from Burger King asked people to defriend 10 people to receive a free Whopper. How can that really be a word? Recessionista is a portmanteau of recession and fashionista, meaning someone who strives to dress chic even though she’s broke. When the economy gets going again, this word should disappear. So why does it need to go into our permanent collection?

The Global Language Monitor says it has rules for determining when a word really becomes legitimate enough for the collection. It has to appear at least 25,000 times in a variety of geographic locations and media. The man behind the project said a word is created about once every 98 minutes.

As a professional writer, my first response is argh! These made up words and language additions drive me insane. Do you realize how long it takes to dig to find if Octomom has to be capitalized or hyphenated? For gosh sake’s… did you see that n00b uses zeros? How the heck am I supposed to know that?

This brings up the question of finding the 2009 ultimate style guide. The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has, give or take, about a quarter of a million words and definitions. The edgy, off-color Urban Dictionary claims to have 4,032,262 definitions written since 1999. The word of the day today is beat feet, which means to leave a selected area, as in “My bitter ex-girlfriend showed up at the party I was at, so Jeff gave me a heads up and I beat feet.” Or should we rely on the Coffee house fact finders who post to Wikipedia? The Associated Press Stylebook just doesn’t help at times like these.

Here’s the top 16 near 1,000,000,000:

• 1,000,000: Web 2.0 – The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.
• 999,999: Jai Ho! – The Hindi phrase signifying the joy of victory, used as an exclamation, sometimes rendered as “It is accomplished”. Achieved English-language popularity through the multiple Academy Award Winning film, “Slumdog Millionaire”.
• 999,998: N00b — From the Gamer Community, a neophyte in playing a particular game; used as a disparaging term.
• 999,997: Slumdog – a formerly disparaging, now often endearing, comment upon those residing in the slums of India.
• 999,996: Cloud Computing – The ‘cloud’ has been technical jargon for the Internet for many years. It is now passing into more general usage.
• 999,995: Carbon Neutral — One of the many phrases relating to the effort to stem Climate Change.
• 999,994: Slow Food — Food other than the fast-food variety hopefully produced locally (locavores).
• 999,993: Octomom – The media phenomenon relating to the travails of the mother of the octuplets.
• 999,992: Greenwashing – Re-branding an old, often inferior, product as environmentally friendly.
• 999,991: Sexting – Sending email (or text messages) with sexual content.
• 999,990: Shovel Ready – Projects are ready to begin immediately upon the release of federal stimulus funds.
• 999,989: Defriend – Social networking terminology for cutting the connection with a formal friend.
• 999,988: Chengguan – Urban management officers, a cross between mayors, sheriff, and city managers.
• 999,987: Recessionista – Fashion conscious who use the global economic restructuring to their financial benefit.
• 999,986: Zombie Banks – Banks that would be dead if not for government intervention and cash infusion.
• 1,000,001: Financial Tsunami – The global financial restructuring that seemingly swept out of nowhere, wiping out trillions of dollars of assets, in a matter of months

The email was mostly an ad about their glorious brownies, cookies and cakes, with glowing testimonials by the scrumptious pictures. “Share Your Story!” they said. “Your feedback is our most powerful source of insight about how we’re doing. It is also our best reward!”

They asked me to submit an anecdote of why I love them for their blog. I declined — not because I don’t love them, but because there was nothing in it for me. (Keep reading this post… something in it for you at the bottom!)

I wanted a chance to win free brownies. Better yet, I wanted some free brownies! I wanted some incentive to spend my very precious time to help their marketing efforts.

Lately I’ve become very selfish with my time. When I first started working for myself as a professional writer, I spent lots and lots of time on things that didn’t move me forward. It has taken me a long time to realize how valuable each hour is — how much energy I spend with little 10-minute detours that don’t get me anywhere.

When you work for yourself, it’s easy to lose track of the value of time. After all, we can work on weekends. We don’t feel like someone’s taking advantage of us when we put in a 12-hour day. It’s all for our own benefit, right?

But very recently I did some math that scared me.

• Each day has 24 hours.
• I sleep about 8 hours a night. 16 hours left.
• I workout an average of an hour a day, give or take. 15 hours left.
• Showering, eating, milling about — that’s another 2 hours or so. Down to 13 hours.
• A little breathing time takes up probably 3 hours a day — TV, visiting with D.J., petting the cat. 11 hours.
• Answering email takes at least an hour, sometimes 2. It’s the little things that pile up. “Beth, what do you think of this idea?” “Beth, when can you meet for our next project?” All these notes require a few back-and-forth emails, and they all take time. Down to 8 hours.
• I need to bill at least 3-4 hours a day to make a living. That leaves about 4 hours.
• The 4 hours simply… go away. I Twitter them. I pop on to Facebook. I check our stock portfolio, a meager amount of investments that D.J. and I have fun watching. I’m embarrassed to admit I enjoy watching Yahoo! TV’s Primetime in No Time. It’s silly, but it makes me smile. And I check other stuff. And stand outside in the San Diego sunshine. And people call. And the cat sits on the keyboard. And the time just goes away.

I feel very sad that I don’t feel like I have the time to invest a few minutes for a company I admire. But doing so doesn’t move me forward, and I have to keep my priorities straight. My reaction (which was immediate and decided without hesistation) also gave me insight into my own dealings with people. What I offer has to be worth your time. What I write, what I do, what I give all need to be valuable to you.

On that note, did you sign up for my first-ever giveaway? Tell me your favorite free or low-cost tech tool for a chance to win a gift certificate from Amazon.com!