Working for the past couple of weeks on my blog site, the challenges appeared at times insurmountable and discouraging. Thoughts like, “I’m not a website designer, the site will be a mess”, “I don’t have the “qualifications” to comment on subjects that are beyond my full understanding”, “I have too many challenges with basic linguistics, to write appealing and compelling”. Serious doubts about my blog adventure started to creep in.
Then one morning Ozan Varol spoke to me through one of his newsletters that I have signed up for. Here are four one-liners that I noted:
- Get back to first principles. Ask yourself what do you want to achieve?
- Sacrifice the certainty of answer
- Intersection of idealism and pragmatism
The main reason for this blog is to clear up any misconceptions someone may have regarding who I am, and what my positions are relating to the present cultural upheaval. Not to skew the picture of my personality, but to be as real as possible, showing the good the bad and (God forbid) the ugly.
If I only acted after I had all answers, and all tees crossed, my life would be hog-tight. Looking back, I have been out of the gate and doing something on a many occasion without having all assurances in place. Admittingly, at times my goals may have been too lofty, and project success eluded me, but such is the school of hard knocks, and it makes for great teaching memories. I experienced my share of situations where idealism needed to be intersected by pragmatism, though at the time I never recognized or called it as such.
It is not easy to follow Ozan’s advise to seriously question one’s assumptions, but it would seem imprudent to write this blog without continuously keeping that question in mind.
Sitting on a fence is uncomfortable. It being Friday the 13th or not, I am throwing my proverbial hat over the fence and are launching my Not-Indifferent site.
The look and functionality of the site is not yet where I would like it to be, but its basics are working. The site setup will be under construction for some time to come and the routines of updates still needs to be established. But the toughest job is to ensure that the blog posts are screened by the question in the back of my mind “Do I own my assumptions, or do my assumptions own me?
Being now on the other side of the fence, I am sure to find everything else but my “hat”. It feels a little like having climbed into a Jurassic Park, who knows where the next “beast” is going to come from? Luckily people in my age group are considered dinosaurs, as that should make us the beneficiary of thick skin, a good thing to have when dealing with negative comments. Apparently, dinosaurs also had small brains, at least relative to their body size, but If one believes Mark Twain, then a less than perfect IQ can have its benefits.
Until next time Horstt