Of Journals and Work
15 June, 2001

Matthew on our front path

When I uploaded my two previous journals to this site last night, I just realised again how much work I'd put into them. There were hundreds of entries spread over the three years since I first started writing online. That's a lot of time. Even at 30 mins for an entry - which is conservative - that's still hundreds of hours. Time spent typing a life and sharing it.

I've never thought too much about the sharing part of it, and the realisation that I'm creating something with other writers and readers. I've always thought I'll write and the writing can speak for itself. Which is ok. But it's not the whole story. The whole story involves people being brave enough, or stupid enough, or egotisical enough to share with others. The whole story involves a sense of risk - "suppose someone finds out?", "suppose no one reads it?" - and it involves a sense of reaching out to other people. The whole story, I think, is about putting our human(e)ness out there and other people finding connections with it. There's some good in the world when people care enough to write and care enough to read.

In case you hadn't realised, I'm working full-time for an Internet development company. Going back working for myself was good, but didn't provide quite enough security. The lure of a regular weekly wage offset the fun of being able to work unshaven and in the same clothes I slept in! Having said that, I'm still finishing the big project that casued me to go back working for myself in January. It's mainly been the client taking waaaaaaaaay longer with content production than they anticipated, which is rather good from our point of view. "Push the deadline back two months? sure, we can accommodate you on that!" It's been an enjoyable project. I've learnt a lot about managing a larger project, and especially about the value of putting in a lot of work at the start of developing a website. Working through what the site is trying to do, what content it will contain, how that content will be structured and provided to site users, developing a usable navigation system that will make sense to the users ... More and more I'm realising just how important this stuff is. The days of starting off a project by playing around with a company logo in Photoshop seem long gone!

That was another motivation for going back to work for a larger company. The opportunity to try and soak up as much knowledge as I can. My ideal would still be to form a company with Debbie and Michael, who's been working on this project and others with me as I think we've developed a really good methodology and way of working together. But until we can make that a reality, I want to be in a position where I can learn and learn.

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THREE YEARS AGO

Of Journals and Work
15 June, 2001

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THREE YEARS AGO

Of Journals and Work 15 June, 2001

LINKS AND STUFF

Links

Webrings

Get Notified!

Of Journals and Work
15 June, 2001