The Dream Crushing Wall

I'm going to take a little time to vent here and try to work out some feelings I've been having lately. I realize this is not a technical post, per se, so feel free to skip this one or go read a magazine or something until a new post pops up.

For the past year or so, truth be told probably a bit longer than that, I've been feeling like my career trajectory has become stagnant. I just haven't been making much progress towards getting those two magic little letters after my name and it seems like the "CG" will only be available for me to use in my dreams at night. For a time, I thought perhaps writing and getting my name out into the world that way would be the ticket. But the problem is, the writing doesn't happen by itself. Imagine that! And try as I might, it hasn't been coming easily for me. More importantly, without a larger client base (or really, any client base at all) the pool of cases available for me to use as topics is minuscule. What's more, there are even less of the more complex type necessary for a creating an interesting article. So...I can't write anything worthwhile when I have something to write about, and it's a rare thing to have something interesting to write about in the first place. Thus, the wall. Stagnation. Any number of dream crushing metaphors come to mind as I imagine my goal getting farther and farther away. Or at least it's not getting any closer and that's a problem. So how can I reverse this? Short answer, I have no idea. I could say I could try harder to get the writing thing going and surely something will materialize out of that. But that almost seems to be counter productive since that hasn't been working for me. Why go back to something that's not working? I think I need a new plan of attack. Since I've moved to Maryland, I offered to do some little jobs for people and got a huge response. But it was just that -- little jobs. Nothing of real substance there. But maybe there is something in just going to the Archives and poking around in things that sound interesting. Getting acquainted in things that generally mean nothing to me today. Sounds like it could be beneficial to my knowledge base, but how could that help get me closer to my goal? No idea. I'm spent. I don't have a clue how to proceed. I can do the research. I can process the results and do the evaluation. But I don't know how to finish acquiring the skills I need to be successful in a CG application. I don't know how to move forward and build a career for myself. It's one thing to say you want something but it's quite another to be able to make that happen. You can't just say it and make it so, you have to do it. I understand that. But what if there's no road map? What do you do then? Make your own?  Ok, I'm down for that. But how? Ugh. I need to figure this out. I don't want to be stagnant anymore.