Let’s get into it…

Meta

Periodically I will check-in publicly on the progress of the blog as I see it. My tentative structure for these posts will be:

• Meta
• State of the union
• What’s changed since last time?
• What have I learned?
• How do I feel about it so far?
• My current objectives
• Metrics

Getting started

Starting a blog is something that has been a long time coming for me. I had a lot of the ingredients laid out, but it took sometime to find the right mix before I was ready to start. I had written from time to time, but hardly considered myself a writer. I had trouble finding what I wanted to say and I had fear, fear about putting myself out there, fear about trying and failing, fear that I’m just not the kind of person who was born to do this. Well after “growing a pair,” (a phrase I hate, but aptly describes my feelings), I decided to jump in. I watched the minimum necessary Youtube videos to figure out what it took to get started and I started.

I committed to spending the minimum monies necessary to get the place up and running with the lights on, but zero costs above that. That means no SEO help, no high dollar (or any dollar) plug-ins, features, bells or whistles. A domain, hosting and then a WordPress account with a minimal social presence is all I started with.

What is my “why?” My number one goal is to create something that becomes my life’s work. Simple enough. Secondarily, it will help me organize my thoughts. Every other reason comes after that.

State of the union

I established my domain on 2021.08.21. Today is the 23rd of October, approximately 2 months later. I’ve ported over 80% of my articles from other platforms and plan to port over the remainder with time. I’ve written several new articles since my start. I’m finding my niche (as they say), starting by writing about what I know. For me that means, deep diving on my career as a consultant and my learnings. I’ve also written quite a bit about the human condition and intend to do so because I find people, the way they live their lives endlessly fascinating. I have not yet revealed this blog to anyone in my life except a couple casual mentions that I’m building something out to a few of my close friends.

What’s changed since the last update?

Since this is the first update, essentially everything has changed. I went from not having a blog to having one. As part of that evolution I’ve been working to establish process around writing for my blog. My objective is to provide structure that will help me write as much as possible in the time that I have available. I have a full time job that takes up the bulk of my waking hours. So far I have written, but I haven’t written as much as I’d like. The trouble is distractions. There’s so much I want to do, I’m trying to put off non-critical-path items for as long as possible. I fear that the process may be non-critical-path, but I don’t regret establishing it because I know it’s something I’ll need eventually.

What have I learned?

To write online, other than the initial hurdle of establishing the hosting, there’s not much in the way of technical components. Yes, you can get fancy with your webpage design, but personally I’m going for as simple as possible. Design these days favors the minimal and that makes it easier for me, so I’m leaning into that. I’ve also learned that it takes time to develop quality content. Not everything is created start to finish in one sitting. So rather than trying to find big chunks of time to spend working on single piece, I’m trying to chop it up as much as possible to make it easier to make meaningful progress in the small chunks of time I have as well. To that end in addition to my pipelines for creating content, I’m building out a personal knowledge management system to help me mature my content creation wells to keep them from running dry.

How do I feel about it so far?

I find writing online to be a great use of my free time. It gives me added reason to rush home because I have something I want to actively work towards. It’s reignited my dormant passion for learning. I feel creative juices flowing like I haven’t in a while. It’s helping me to get over my self consciousness about content creation and to believe that I can do it.

My current objectives are…

• To get to 100 articles published.
• Everything else is secondary

Metrics

• Views: <not tracking until I get to 100 articles>
• No. Articles: 21