As I’ve failed to keep up a consistent output for this blog, one thing has become crystal clear — writing is impossible if you don’t know who you’re writing for, or why you’re writing. Today, I think I’ve finally found my crowd. It’s me, and everyone like me.

Finding comfort

La-Z-Boy Furniture

The hardest thing, so far, in keeping up this this blog has been finding some level of repeatable comfort. Right now, I feel as awkward as a set of adult braces, forcing myself to write little ditties about what mouse I just got for my Macbook. I mean, I don’t want to read that, much less write it.

Why did I do it? Well, I’m trying to “write my way through” this learning period. I’m forcing myself to try things I know won’t work. So far it’s been great. I’m slowly building confidence that I can experiment with this site, and push my own absurdly restrictive limitations.

Who am I?

Without question, blogging has shown that I’m just terrible at self expression and public writing. I mean, keeping up a blog mostly scoped to web design isn’t exactly the most revealing of topics, right? It should be easier than I’m letting it be.

What’s making it hard is that I’m saying no too often. I’m pulling back, when I should be driving forward. I have tons of ideas, but I’m sitting on them — I don’t want them out unless their perfect. This is absurd. The motivation behind taking the jump to running my own design business was to have more freedom to experiment and grow creatively as a designer and entrepreneur.

Well, this is all going to change. From now on, this is a ‘yes blog’ — I’m going to use it to experiment with my persona, and try and expand my creative output.

Who are you?

Aside from my own personal hesitations with writing, one of the other blocks is not knowing who I’m writing for. Up to now, I’ve just been emulating those I read — a fine way to start, but wholly unsatisfying after a short while.

It’s become clear recently that I really want to write for the ‘silent majority’ of web designers and entrepreneurs who don’t have a voice on the web. This was me, just a few months ago — I’d read all the blogs, keep up on things, form an opinion, but keep it inside. I never posted comments, never spoke up. I understand being silent. I don’t like piling myself in on the giant flame wars, the meddling technology discussions, or the pithy nitpicking of faux-typographers.

And yet, I feel like it’s a “Good Thing” to hear a voice that isn’t all that impressed with the way things are on the intertubes these days — I really don’t get the fascination with Twitter, Facebook seems like a time suck, I don’t really use Flickr that often, and this is my first blog. And I’ve been doing this stuff since 1996. I’m an “outside/insider” and I know that I’m not alone.

Here’s to hoping I can get across an interesting perspective, one worth reading, and that I’m just not hurling more shit on the fan.