Any Step Will Do
Just take a step, any step will do. It is getting started that is the hardest ting to do. Can you see it? Inertia is working against you through time and space. The longer you live and the further you go the harder it is to continue.
So make it easy to take one step. I used to put my thoughts into a sef hosted wordpress site both to write and also to play with the whole lamp stack. After some years it just took time that I didn’t have. Multiple times I tried to re-vive it but wasn’t willing to swing over to full centralized control of the content. Then the static site movemnt gained momentum and I ‘evaluated’ things. Eveythings. Then I settled on a system and started making it perfect.
Years went by and all I had to show for it were some text files with aspirations and ideas in my head. Why was this? Not becuase I lack technical skill. Not becuase I lack the ability to write cogently. Not because I lack the time. To answer they why question as simply as possible it is because I spent my time doing things without doing anything.
So I took a step. I purchased a domain for myself. Then I took another step and started with someone elses static site by ripping out their boilerplate stuff and putting the simplest version I could show in public. Then I write this post.
Each step adds momentum and that balances out and sometimes, for a while it even counters inertia. The key to making progress in anything is to get started. The key to getting started is the first step. THe key to the first step are is your environment.
So set your environment up so it is right for your first step, be that what it may. Are you trying to get into an exercise routine? Put your shoes and clothes right next to your bed and go to sleep an hour early. Set your coffee maker for an hour after your workout session so you have an automatic reward waiting. For my website thing it was more of getting out of my head and all of the things I know and use every day at work and going back to a beginners mind. What is the simplest thing I need to do to focus on a writing platform that I control?
For me that was version control, a static site generator, a domain and some scripts that automatically publish when I commit new changed. Everything else in my head, all of the fancy stuff I want:
- A laboratory to play with cool things
- A demo area to showcase what I am proud of
and anything else that my strike my fancy in the future can be built in iterative cycles. Because it all starts with a single step.
