There are probably more strategic reasons I could give you for launching a blog.
I could say that I wanted to build my personal brand.
I could say that I wanted to establish myself as a thought leader.
I could even say that I wanted to create a platform to share my expertise with the world.
Those are all nice phrases. Very professional. Very LinkedIn. The kind of phrases people use when they want boredom to wear a blazer.
The actual reason is simpler.
I was bored.
I had been meaning to learn Hugo for a while. I tried a few times, but it never really stuck. Eventually, I realized Hugo wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I had no real reason to use it.
So I did what I usually do when I want to learn something.
I built something I now have to maintain.
This is either discipline or a cry for help with DNS records. It’s hard to say what’s what right now, so I guess only time will tell.
I decided to use my website as a testing ground. Rebuild it. Add a blog. Start a newsletter. Create a place where I could write things down before they disappeared into my notes app, a random conversation, or the part of my brain where useful ideas go to die next to old passwords and the name of my third-grade teacher.
And here we are.
I’ve been told for years that I should write more and share my thoughts with the world.
The funny thing is, I tried.
I tried posting consistently on social media. I really did.
But something about it always felt strange.
Not because social media is evil. It isn’t. At least not entirely. It’s more like a shopping mall with a nervous system: useful sometimes, loud always, and full of people pretending they just happened to be standing near their own billboard.
Everything slowly turned into a performance.
Every thought had to become a post.
Every post needed a hook.
Every hook needed a lesson.
Every lesson needed a reason why someone should care.
And if you were really committed, every lesson needed to end with something like:
Here’s what this taught me about leadership.
Which is impressive, because sometimes the lesson is just that you ate a bad sandwich.
Maybe that works for some people. Some people are good at playing that game. They understand the formats. They know when to post. They can look directly into a camera and say something like “I’ve been thinking a lot about failure lately” without breaking character or immediately throwing their phone into a river.
I’m not built that way.
I just longed for a place to think.
A place where I could write about something because I found it interesting, not because an algorithm looked at it and said, “This has potential if you make it more emotionally manipulative.”
In addition, I didn’t really want to show my face, which probably limited my chances in the whole “become a creator” economy.
That’s allegedly frowned upon now. Folks used to be able to have a thought without filming themselves walking down the street holding a cup of coffee. Now people need to see your pores before they trust your opinion on product strategy, or what it’s like to go through life as a 6'8" woman who wants to have twenty-two kids.
So instead of trying to play a game I wasn’t interested in playing, I decided to build my own little corner of the internet.
No grand objective.
No master plan.
No ten-part content funnel where I slowly move you from “mildly interested stranger” to “person who buys a PDF from me at 11:47 P.M.”
I’m mostly here to ruminate.
Some posts will be informative. Some will have a call to action. Some will probably just be me exploring a thought that wouldn’t leave me alone, which is rude behavior from a thought, but here we are.
If there is a CTA, I’ll probably ask you to do something. Subscribe. Read another post. Share something. Click a link. Perform one small ritual in the economy of attention so I can pretend this is all headed somewhere measurable.
That’s the world we live in now.
Attention is valuable. Time is valuable. If something I write makes you want to take action, great.
But the biggest thing I hope happens is simpler than that.
I hope you read something and think:
Interesting.
That would be a win in my book.
You may agree.
You may also disagree.
Honestly, I don’t really care.
Not in a hostile way. I care that people have opinions. I care that people can disagree. I care that a conversation can survive the traumatic event of two adults not clapping for the same sentence.
That feels rare now.
Having discourse has become a lost art, mostly because the moment you disagree with someone, they start acting like you broke into their home and insulted their grandmother’s soup.
People don’t debate anymore. They diagnose. They categorize. They assign you a villain origin story because you said something they didn’t immediately recognize as one of the approved opinions.
And then, quite literally, they want to shoot or punch you in the face.
Which feels excessive.
Sometimes a disagreement is just a disagreement. Sometimes the person on the other side isn’t evil. Sometimes they’re just wrong in a way that makes them interesting to talk to.
Or they’re right, and you have to deal with that privately like an adult, which is much worse.
Since this is my first post, I should probably tell you a little more about myself.
Not in the “here are three fun facts for the company Slack channel” way.
More in the “these are some of the beliefs that have somehow survived years of evidence, conversation, and people telling me to seek help” way.
A few things I believe:
- Texas > California.
- Jose Mourinho > Pep Guardiola.
- LeBron James > Michael Jordan.
- Sparkling water was a mistake.
- Denial is not a river in London.
- People from Austria should be called Ostriches.
- Bill Russell is the greatest basketball player of all time.
- AI (Artificial Intelligence) as it is today is arguably 95% artificial and 5% intelligence.
- Chamillionaire is the greatest rapper of all time.
- Andrés Iniesta, Franck Ribéry, Manuel Neuer, Robert Lewandowski, Wesley Sneijder, and Xavi Hernández each deserved at least one Ballon d’Or.
Some things I think are overrated:
- Bacon.
- Suffering.
- Starting from nothing / the bottom.
- Jamie Carragher’s football career. Conversely, I believe he’s vastly underrated as a pundit.
- The Ballon d’Or. Arguably the biggest joke on this list.
- 2Pac, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kobe Bryant, Lionel Messi, Michael Jordan, Pele, and The Manchester United Class of 1992.
You might read those and think I’m wrong.
That’s okay.
The goal is not to convince you that I’m right.
I know I am, and that’s enough for me.
I think the internet is more interesting when people are willing and able to say what they actually think. Not because they need to be controversial. Not because they need attention. Not because they are trying to build a seven-figure audience by Tuesday.
Just because they have something to say.
That feels small now, but it probably shouldn’t.
Somewhere along the way, we started treating every thought like it needed a business model. Every interest needed a strategy. Every personality needed a brand. Every opinion needed to be packaged, optimized, distributed, and measured like it was being shipped out of a warehouse.
That’s exhausting.
Sometimes a person should be allowed to write something down because it bothered them, amused them, confused them, or sat in their head long enough that charging it rent felt appropriate.
That’s what this blog represents for me.
I will more than likely write about a mix of things I’m building, things I’m learning, things I find interesting, and random observations that somehow convinced me they deserved their own URL.
Expect thoughts on products, technology, design, strategy, culture, psychology, sports, humor, and whatever else my brain decides to overinvest in without consulting me first.
If this sounds like your cup of hot chocolate, you should consider subscribing to my newsletter.
You should subscribe, even if you don’t care about the subject matter. How else are you going to learn?
Even if you don’t care about every email, open them anyway. Click a few links. Let me occasionally pretend I’m building a community and not just sending formatted thoughts into the void with a subject line.
And if I ever feel like it, maybe I’ll send you a gift card as a thank you.
No promises.
This whole thing started because I was bored, not because I suddenly decided to identify as Santa Claus.
Anyway, welcome.
Wipe your feet on the algorithm before coming in.
Not every idea needs to become content. Some ideas just need somewhere to sit down.