Business: April was my second full month as an independent business owner. It’s awesome having a flexible schedule, especially as the weather warms up. Instead of laying the groundwork for another consulting engagement or other active income gig for September, I’ve been focusing on developing skills and content instead – writing, drawing, things like that. I think that will work out better for me with our plans for this year. In May, I look forward to doing consulting 3-4 days a week and using the other days to improve my system and learn more about drawing.

• Unstructured time update, now that I have my own business
• Getting ready for my “The Shy Entrepreneur” talk at the Toronto Reference Library tomorrow (Apr 10 Tue, 6 PM)
• Learning how to say no
• On why I don’t want to work on a tech startup (yet)
• Getting the hang of making time for business development
• Optimizing for weather and other thoughts about self-employed time
• Thinking about the time/money swap
• Learning how to manage time
• Why I’m temporarily unhireable
• Learning about business finances
• From maker time to learner time

Drawing: I’ve been working on more visual metaphors and book reviews, and general drawing practice as well. Tracing pictures is easy, and it’s pretty fun too. In May, I’m looking forward to drawing more book reviews and meetup notes, and testing if I can review the images easily on my phone.

• Practising faces
• Visual metaphors: Argument
• Visual book review: Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us about the Art of Persuasion
• Sketches: People-watching at High Park
• Visual metaphors: Change
• Visual metaphors: Trust

Life: Warmer weather is biking weather, hooray! I biked to work throughout April, except for two rainy days. I look forward to biking almost all the time in May as well. I enjoy the bike ride downtown, and it’s good exercise.

• Back to biking
• Decision review: Got the Lenovo battery slice for my X220 tablet
• Waking up with barcodes
• Garden update
• Digital uncluttering: my backup and clean up plan

Time reviews: Did lots of things, yay!

• Weekly review: Week ending April 6, 2012
• Weekly review: Week ending April 13, 2012
• Weekly review: Week ending April 20, 2012
• Weekly review: Week ending April 27, 2012
• Monthly review: March 2012

Tracking focus: In May, I want to analyze the season’s output for the Cooper’s Farm community supported agriculture program. I also want to start tracking grocery receipts at the line-item level, which I might do with Lemon or with a virtual assistant. I’m curious about whether we can shift towards buying more vegetables this season.