How did we get here?

You know how it goes.

You’ve got an idea and think: “that would be great to write about/build/make/whatever!”.

So you add it to your to-do list, do a little research, write up an outline, and get either a draft or an MVP created. Awesome!

But you can’t publish it yet because it’s just not good enough yet. Maybe after another revision/another feature. You say to yourself: “This isn’t deep enough/complete enough/complex enough. Now that I’m looking at it, it’s kind of embarrassing. Maybe I shouldn’t have written/built/made this at all.”

And that’s the story of how I met your mother why I haven’t ever published here consistently and haven’t published a new post in three years but have managed to accumulate a folder full of dozens of half-finished drafts.

What’s going on here?

“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly”.

I’m not sure where I heard this quote (I looked it up just now and apparently it is attributed to the philosopher G.K. Chesterton), but I heard it recently and it resonated with me. Chesterton’s quote reminded me that it is better to spend the effort to build something and ship it than it is to spend that same effort and not ship it just because it is, by some measure, imperfect.

This reminded me of another phrase that I have internalized at previous times in my life, this time by Voltaire:

“The perfect is the enemy of the good”

After mulling over the above, What I realized this really distills down to is that I need to give myself permission to make something imperfect and, by extension, publicly share my own imperfection.

So what next?

Changing behaviors takes more than just a shift in mindset, it takes action. So as far as this new revelation goes towards affecting **waves hands around** this place, I am in the process of making a few mechanical changes to support publishing more content here.

First, I’ve reconfigured posts to include an optional “modified date”. Since I’m publishing my own content on my own site, what I publish isn’t set in stone and immutable. If I draft up a post that’s good enough and just ship it I can choose to refine it after the fact and update the post’s “modified date” metadata.

Second, I am in the process of updating the site structure to lower the barrier to publish new content by introducing different categories of posts. I took inspiration from both Julia Evans and Brandur and definitely cannot claim this idea as my own.

1. Bytes: Long form posts (or series of posts) to dive into a topic.
2. Nibbles: TIL’s and other short form content. Maybe one will grow into a Byte, who knows!
3. Bits: Showerthoughts. Daydreams. Realizations. Basically tweets.

Honestly, the expanded scope and recategorization of content to publish here feeds into the POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) concept that I recently learned about. Which aligns deeply with my standpoint on content ownership and our collective relationship with social media.

Anyways, sometimes you just have to get out of your own way and send it. Hopefully I’ve figured out how. 🍻