Hard start

Beginning any new creative work is hard.

You don’t know what the work will become and you often aren’t sure of what you want it to become. It’s almost pure ambiguity. Everything is unknown.

Eventually the work will progress towards something real and concrete but the beginning is often filled with many 'failures', false starts, blind alleys, and frustrating road blocks. Worst of all, the beginning of the work is when the siren song of ‘getting it right’ is loudest and most difficult to ignore.

“With just a little more work you will get it right.”

“Only a little more planning and it is sure to be a success.”

This website is my most recent experience with this process.

I’ve wanted to ‘do something’ with this site for over a year but I’ve only been actively working on it for the last two weeks in the mornings, evenings and over weekends. I’ve gone through at least four different business concepts and I’ve wrestled with all the different things that it could be.

“Should I create that course I wanted to teach? A blog? Audio/video blog? Should I use Webflow or Ghost? Back to Wordpress again? Subscriptions? Should I purchase a new domain? What about creating an LLC and how would I setup payments….”

All of this ‘activity’ is just a way of not committing to something enough to create the possibility of failure. After all, if you never commit to anything you can’t fail. The irony of course is that not producing anything is the only real failure.

So, how do you get past this?

Put something down

Just put something down. It won’t ever be what you want it to be, if it isn’t something first.

So, what could this project be?

Well, right now I’m studying:

• Complexity (Dynamic Systems and Evolution)
• Product (Design and Development)
• Creativity (Innovation and Process)
• Business (Entrepreneurship and Strategy)
• Psychology (Behavioral modification and Cognition)

I have been reading, discussing, writing (offline) and thinking about most of these topics for the last twenty years.

So, I am going to write and sketch about these concepts to learn and understand them better and hopefully you will find that valuable.

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(On second thought, maybe I should change the fonts on the site one more time before posting…)