JFDI

This morning I read an excellent post by Alex Turnbull of Groove. It reminded me that blogging is important in establishing reputation. If I’m going to claim I’m a WordPress expert, then I’d better start demonstrating that. I want to document the challenges that I face (which clients mostly never hear about) in delivering websites of which I can be proud to say, “I made that”.

But how long have I been saying I’ll start writing again? [footnote]I used to write on everything iPhone at All About iPhone, and I made sure I posted regularly. It was quite fun geeking out over the latest Apple devices, but then web development took over and it slowly tailed off.[/footnote] I reckon a couple of years. And there’s always something – whether it’s client work or just life – that gets in the way. Because I thought I needed to build my Proper Business Website first. But I didn’t; I just needed to start.

Projects always seem overbearing and unmanageable until you break them down into chunks. Even setting up this blog and writing the first post seemed a little daunting – given all the other things that I need to do at the moment – until I turned it into a series of smaller items to get through. And I did. In the course of this afternoon and evening I went from having a placeholder website to having a blog that I’m very happy with.

So I haven’t made the really professional business website that I imagined, but I have made a start. And the first step is the most important one. As one of my Aikido teachers once said to me, “The first thing is to start. The next thing is not to stop”.