Succumbing to Content Creation

OK, that’s a fairly glum title, but it’s true: I finally decided to start a proper YouTube channel. And I have mixed feelings about it. 😄 I have actually wanted to make some cocktail-related videos for a long time now, but time management, procrastination, and self-doubt kept it on the back burner… until now. Except somehow I ended up talking about non-alcoholic stuff instead! 🤷‍♂️ It’s something I’ve been getting more into and it feels like an interesting niche.

It takes a lot of time, and I’m not totally happy with the results yet. I’m also still working through that “OK but who am I to have an opinion on the internet?” impostor syndrome feeling. But hey, I’m doing it! And it does feel good to do something, you know? I have felt a sort of pent up desire to “create” for a while, so I had to try.

Having said all that, hopefully you still want to check it out! Please do, and let me know what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/@zeroproofhomebar

I started a digital garden…

Hey, so I haven’t been posting here all that often. Sorry about that… But guess what! I found a solution: I created a “digital garden”. What the heck is that you say? I wrote (er, started to write) a thing about that!

Basically it’s a different “frame” for content and creative output in general. It changes the dynamic for both author and reader away from a focus on presumably polished, “finished” piece of content, and toward works-in-progress, change, and improvement over time (one might call that “growth” 🤔). The metaphor recalls the idea of cultivation, of “growing” one’s ideas, writing, and other creative output.

As a result it has a much lower barrier to “publishing”. A piece of content does not have to be “finished” to be made “public”. This has advantages for creators and consumers (or perhaps more like “interactors”) alike. Again I’ve written more about that in the “garden” itself.

You probably don’t know it, but I have numerous half-finished blog posts in the back-end of my blog. Maybe there are some interesting ideas in there, but you’d never know until and unless I have the time and energy to finish writing, polish them up, and publish. 😱 Yes, for some of us, publishing feels like kind of a big deal, even on one’s own website. So… the digital gardens concept is a way around my own sense of perfectionism, and thus far it has been really freeing.

I now expect a majority of my new creative work to show up there first, and I hope you’ll head on over and check it out. And comment! I’m not sure what I’ll do with my blog and main site in general, and I still intend to produce “final” or “polished” pieces from time to time. But for now the gardens should be your first stop if you’re interested in what I’m thinking and writing about lately.

The “personal card”

Over the past few years I’ve found myself meeting a lot more people at random out in the world than I was used to for much of my life. Some have given me their numbers, or friended me on Facebook, and some have given me their cards, both business and personal. It became clear that leaving the onus on the other person to reach out and provide contact info was needlessly limiting, so I decided to put together some kind of personal identity item I could hand out. I found myself potentially a little in-between business and personal, wanting to be open to and potentially showcase my skills and experience, or at least interests, but also to keep it casual and open-ended, as functional for a new potential work contact as for a possible date. And I didn’t want to carry two cards. So…

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