Moving beyond the professional

I saw some posts on Twitter this week from people pondering the question – “Why do you write?” That got me to thinking about my own situation. For the most part, my writing has sprung out of necessity – due to work, church, volunteer projects, etc. I’ve not ever spent much time writing for pleasure.

Maybe that’s part of the reason I’ve never really considered myself a real writer. I’ve always attached that term to authors with professionally published books. However, when I stop and think about it, I realize that I’m not being accurate. While I may not have authored any books, I’ve actually had many years in my career as a professional writer. In fact, I once held the position of Senior Technical Writer at a Fortune 500 company.

Writing for my several jobs has encompassed long form technical documents, business communications, marketing pieces, press releases, and the like. Very seldom, though, have I had the opportunity to write fiction. I’m hoping that is about to change.

I’m feeling the pull to branch out and start working on some fiction – maybe even start that novel I’ve been thinking about. However, I’m still a husband, father, employee, and volunteer. Now I’ve just got to figure out how to balance personal writing time against a very full and busy life. Other people have done it, so perhaps I can as well.

Why I sold my iPad mini and took my first steps toward the dark side

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This is really a shocker. Or at least, it’s a shocker to me. I sold my iPad mini and bought a Samsung Chromebook. Am I going over to the dark side?

I have been a big fan of Apple products for many years. I’ve owned everything from iPods (mini, nano, classic, touch), iPhones (3G, 4, 4S, 5), iPads (1 & 3), MacBooks (two), iMacs (three) and yes, the iPad mini. Of all these products, the one that was the biggest let down for me was the iPad mini.

I think it was a combination of factors. First, I have been completely spoiled by the retina displays on my iPad 3 and iPhone 5. Once you’ve gotten used to that, it’s extremely difficult to go back to a device that doesn’t have the same pixel density. Plus, I have been using a 7” Kindle Fire HD as my main fiction reading device since its launch and let’s face it, the screen on that tablet is pretty darn good as well.

I liked everything else about the iPad mini. It’s integration into the Apple ecosystem with iCloud, the light weight, and definitely the quality of construction. It’s just that I couldn’t get past looking at that low resolution screen. At first I was willing to put up with it, but I found myself using the iPad 3 and the Kindle Fire HD more and more. At the end of the day, that model of iPad mini turned out to be a bad fit for my particular needs.

Then, I found myself in a position of needing to raise some quick cash to deal with an unexpected and rather expensive veterinary bill for my daughter’s dog. The best resolution was to sell the tablet device that I wasn’t using. Fortunately, I had a family member who had a need for a tablet and for whom the iPad mini was actually a good upgrade.

Having gone through all that, I then found myself looking for a replacement device for writing on the go. I had been using my iPad 3 with a bluetooth keyboard, but was getting tired of managing two items, fussing with turning bluetooth on & off, all while trying to position the two for optimum typing in a variety of circumstances. The ideal solution would have been a MacBook Air in keeping with my desire to integrate with the aforementioned Apple ecosystem. The part of that equation which wasn’t ideal was the purchase price. Way too high for my already strained budget.

That’s when I saw a blog post on Google’s new Chromebook products. I had been somewhat aware of these in the past, but it looked like this latest crop of notebooks had some nice features. With my main need being a lightweight device for writing, I thought I’d give it a try. The price was right and working with Google Docs and Google Drive to manage my documents would not be a problem.

This is the first blog post I’ve written on the Chromebook. I’m looking forward to seeing how well I can incorporate this device with my other Apple products. Plus, I’m curious about whether or not having a convenient mobile writing tool will increase my productivity. I guess we’ll see.