Welcome to my first post on this blog.

For any readers out there, I should caution that these blog posts are mostly for me, so I don't plan on spending too much time with grammar checks or carefully editing my writing here. I want this blog to help capture and document my thought process and decisions as I launch a new online service/business (exact idea TBD, but I have a few candidates).

Writing things down helps many of us make our thinking and decisions more concrete, and I'm no exception. It makes sense to me that finding some success in business probably requires some of this good concrete thinking, so therefore maybe more writing means better odds of success? Or maybe the secret to business is just dumb persistence and blind luck? Probably all of the above.

Many others have documented their small indie business journeys on the internet and I've always appreciated reading those blogs, so I guess this can be my turn to return the favor.

I've wanted to start a small web business for nearly 20 years now and have tried a few ideas, nothing serious, and I've never had any of these projects survive longer than six months or so. I've bought maybe 15 domains over the years, everything from what I felt were Real Business Ideas®, to half-baked products or niche websites I've dreamed up while zoning out on a long walk or run.

I'm not quite sure why but this entrepreneurial bug has surfaced again, I'd say it's been a few years since I've felt a real spark to build something. But between the pressures of both a New Year (Hi 2025!) and turning 40 on the near horizon (eek!) I feel like the time is right to capture this energy and take an earnest stab again.

Being realistic in that I am not going to quit my day job, I'm not looking for investors, and I'm not looking to pay contractors/freelancers, whatever I decide to build will need to be small in scope. Even smaller than the software business equivalent of "setting up a folding table at the farmers market", I truly mean "setting up a folding table at the end of the driveway".

Despite aiming for a nano-sized goal, something that is probably achievable by most people, I'll need to continuously fight against my fleeting interest syndrome that could (and probably will!) extinguish this effort on its own. This trait of mine has been a battle for most of my life and I don't have any good answers on how to overcome or fight back.

I hope that having this blog acts sort of like having a buddy to remind and nudge me to prod along, even if my interest is waning. If I don't feel like doing meaningful work to help get a business off the ground, maybe having this virtual notepad will help keep the spark going, and provide a distraction or outlet so that I can still feel productive at the computer.

Other things that will probably sink this attempt at being an entrepreneur, besides the whole idea-and-execution-thing, are my rusty coding chops and limited free time. I think I can shake off that coding rust with some regular practice, I don't feel super concerned about that, and part of this whole "writing down my thoughts" exercise should ensure that I'm not tackling something that's too difficult to code and glue together.

As far as free time goes, now that's a different story. For now this project is going to be low-ish on the priority list. Life, family, work, friends, exercise, etc are all more important than this experiment right this minute, so that means if I want to make incremental progress I'll have to carve small chunks of time whenever I can and be masterfully efficient whenever I get the chance to hack on it.

For now, my goal will be to try and build something on just a couple hours each week -- just small quick tasks that can be completed quickly and easily. Over time, over many months or even years, this should hopefully accumulate in to something worthwhile, successful or perhaps not. Ideally it will be a good exercise either way.

Shipping something, feeling that sense of accomplishment, maybe even earning a couple dollars for having built something that provided value...all things that would provide me a bit of relief, honestly. "Finally", I could say to myself, "I did the thing, and now I know that I can (or can't) be successful."

I'm starting from Step 0, fitting for New Years and the surrounding aura of "starting things anew". I guess writing this post could be my Step 0. As the saying goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a blog post announcing your plans."