5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The Bullet Journal Method – Ryder Carroll

Reading through the Bullet Journal material, one of the slightly deeper methods was simply labeled, Five-Four-Three-Two-One as a way to set goals.

• 5 Years.
• 4 Months.
• 3 Weeks.
• 2 Days.
• 1 Hour.

My day job: I’m an astrologer. When I first glanced at this material, Mercury was in apparent retrograde motion. Dredges up much material from my past.

That five year goal stopped me.

Not a stumble, but I ceased thinking about anything else. On the blank back of a business card, in the last year or two, I sketched a rough line image of the sites I have, how they are related, the links, and then, the URL that drives each site, plus how each one is structured, essentially, all of my sites (except for some of the really old material) are set up as a database-driven (currently WordPress) motors.

Positive attributes? All the data is readily searchable and the output can be quickly, easily configured or styled. Think there are less than a dozen pre-weblog entries to be dropped into the old blog motor. And now? Most of those older entries are in the database.

That five year goal started me thinking, though, in five years? I want to be writing the weekly column I do. I might have a blog someplace, but that’s more for personal reflections and longer format material — or announcements, whatever.

Think: Experimental and experiential. No rules.

That’s about it. Earlier in my exploration of the Bullet Journal experience, I realized that my favorite pet project had lost its focus, and its drive. The old BexarCountyLine.com wasn’t as interesting to me, anymore, it’s just a place to post images. Not always interesting images, just another place to store crap.

In its time, that was a fun site to host and play with, as it was a source of visual intrigue foisted on me by a sense of place, or a sense of a place that I don’t belong, as I was perpetual tourist in the town where I lived.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The five-year goal, though, trying to simplify what I work with and work on, the outlets I use.

If I had this to do all over again, instead of astrofish.net, I would use www.KramerWetzel.com, which in turn, would simplify to www.KramerW.com, two URLs instead of the plethora that I now try to wrangle (1). That being noted, in 1998, when I set out on a single URL, name recognition and branding wasn’t the big thing, and that didn’t emerge as a viable option until after 2010. At that point, more than a decade into one name? I guess I stick with it.

www.kramerwetzel.com has over 2K entries, including two years of the abortive attempt at running a Sky Friday site on its own. Bexar County Line has almost 5K entries, single image, single day, but recently I’ve started dumping the astrology charts I want as images there, as well as tarot cards or whatever, any image that is generated within the confines of Bexar County Line, as stipulated in the site’s original goal by design.

• 5 Years. Get all the material down to a single, manageable URL.
• 4 Months. Get the plan in place to get to that to one URL.
• 3 Week. Post older stuff in kramerwetzel.com.
• 2 Days. Work.
• 1 Hour. Breakfast.

Not sure how this works, and I’m still trying to sort through the ideals of the single URL, which, in effect, would also be abandoning the old addresses. Maybe not a good idea. Still, most near every client has changed some of the contact data.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

What the goal did, churning away, made me look at backend structure, and whats’s being done to make all of this better. Then, an attempt to simplify the whole structure into as few moving parts as possible.

After I imported and started cleaning up the older databases, the number of websites that died? Links to sites that are no longer there? As in “404, site not found?” 404 is the old-style web term for a missing file. Number of links that lead nowhere, now? Or worse, points to a “You can purchase this domain name now!”

Me, the goals I got are lot more simple, and I’ve used this last period of Mercury in apparent retrograde motion to pause and reflect on destinations.

That idea of five-year goal really hung me up until I mapped it out, like this.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Started with a book from the library about Bullet Journals, but that let me dive a little deeper, and provides a greater, rational focus on work, working structures, and what will serve best, now — and for the future.

The Bullet Journal Method – Ryder Carroll

• (1) Numbers don’t lie, easiest way to explain, that, the site itself, about three of specific URLs get the largest share of the traffic with the most going to horoscopes themselves, and the rest is filler. So the URLs derived from my book titles, and other experiences? Gradually letting them all slip away. Book titles — just about all of them — now just resolve to the astrofish.net/books page. Simpler that way. Turns out I was the only referral for those outside sites.