As I’ve been onboarding at Root recently, I’ve been forced to recognize how much I overthink things. I tend to want to sit with an idea, think through all the possible implications and outcomes, before committing to it or putting it out into the world.
I’ve also been forced to recognize how impossible that makes both work and daily living.
For example, I’ve had this domain for at least 5 years, and for most of that time, it’s been an almost-blank website that said, “You look great today,” and on the /about page, “There’ll be more here eventually, I promise.”
Over those 5 years, I’ve had a couple of attempts at updating the site, but I’ve always gotten hung up on the form rather than the function. I would sit down at my computer for a few hours, researching different frameworks I could use, thinking of all of the cool creative ways I could style and implement my site. I did half-baked Ruby on Rails and NextJS versions, tried to do GitHub pages + Jekyll before getting stuck on a plugin issue, even played with writing raw HTML and CSS just to keep it simple.
But every time, I got stuck fiddling with the details and never actually did anything with the result.
This time, I decided to simplify as much as possible, and focus on finding a framework that would allow me to write Markdown files and easily publish them to a website, with nice built-in styling and some opportunities for customization. Instead of focusing on an ideal final result, I focused on finding something, anything, that I could get up and running in a few hours that would allow me to build momentum around writing and publishing. And that’s how I landed on Quartz!
It feels great to be focused on the writing, not on the technology. I was trying to have my personal website do two things at once: 1. be a place to write and share ideas, and 2. be a place for me to experiment with technology that interests me. While #2 is still important to me, I realized that putting those eggs in my personal website basket made no sense. Let the personal site be about the content, and find other avenues for experimentation.
If I had to summarize the direction I’m moving in in life right now, it’s “publish more.” That might mean posts here, posting on social media, performing music in front of an audience, contributing to OSS, or anything else that necessitates putting something out into the world. I’m tired of worrying about how I’ll be perceived, and want to instead be excited about what could come out of sharing with the world.
I was reading this post by Are.na founder and former Artsyer Cab, and this rang true for me:
But if you’re really focusing on the moment, on something you love, on something in the world that feels like it’s made for you, you can’t be thinking about how it will benefit you, or how it will reflect back on you.
I’m feeling ready to do more focusing on what’s important, and less on what others will think about my choices. And part of that is getting out of my own way when it comes to making those choices.