I decided to take most of December off from job hunting and work on developing the multimedia business a little more, getting the equipment and software needed to make it work, so I at least have somewhat of a backup plan when I get back to job hunting at the end of the year. It also hasn’t helped that the economy has made the job market quite tough here in Tampa Bay, so jobs are not the easiest to find.

In honesty, Christmas this year isn’t going to be much. I haven’t bothered to decorate the house, put on Christmas music (apart from what plays occasionally on the smooth jazz channel I usually listen to), or done any real Christmas shopping apart from ordering a present for my wife to be shipped to her parents’ house, where she is still at, even though she is fully recovered from her surgeries, working, and otherwise has no legitimate reason to continue staying there. I’m not sure what part of “for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health” we didn’t understand in our wedding vows, but I digress—I’m reaping what I’ve sown. My plans are pretty much to spend Christmas alone, perhaps make a few phone calls on the day to family and a few friends. The only “christmassy” thing I’ve done this year is to joinTampa Two Stroke on their annual light ride. The reality is that I basically don’t want anything to do with “holidays” this year.

In the meantime, I’ve been introduced lately to a great number of social media thinkers and movers—podcasters, bloggers, and entrepreneurs who are earning their keeps riding the social media and internet multimedia waves. People likeChris Brogan,C. C. Chapman,Christopher Penn,Loïc Le Meur,Laura “Pistachio” Fitton,Eric Rice, and a host of others. Don’t know how these individuals got to where they are or figured out how to make a decent living out of doing what they do, but they are all inspirational people. Had I not met these people I probably wouldn’t have thoughts of this multimedia business churning in my head. It’s supposedly possible to make a living doing what you love, and I’ve gotten far too used to being a teleworker to stomach going back to a daily commute unless there’s no other alternative.

I’ve also been introduced to the ground level of some unique social media centers-of-attention, likeUtterz (social audio blogging) andSeesmic (social video blogging). Both of these have allowed me to come out of my shell a bit as I post phone and video entries for the world to look at or listen to. I also began taking a self-portrait each day for the following 365 days, which aredaily posted to my Flickr photo stream. There’s just so much that I enjoy doing in the media realm that I’m not able to focus on just one thing, which could be good or bad depending on how far I end up extending myself.

But I guess I should make my mind quickly what I really want to do, and get to it, because the severance I’m living off of won’t last me very long. All I can hope is that things open up with the beginning of the new year, when companies have new budgets, new openings, new ideas of what they can spend. Of course, the economy may not be much of a support, but I can only deal with what’s in front of me right now. Everything else has to deal with itself.