Hello there! My name is John! 150phase is my little digital space, like a cozy cafe somehow locatable in the vastness of the internet. You’ve ended up here so it is indeed findable. You may want to recheck your algorithms because even I don’t know how to explain the circumstances that led to your arrival. Feel free to stay as long as you’d like, though.
Regardless of what led you here, welcome. “Getting started” refers to the state of two things chiefly. The first is the state of this website: very new and freshly launched as of this post’s published date. The second is the state of my writing: a bit rusty and somewhat awkward in its appearance. I promise to do my best to stay within the bounds of coherent.
I am quite partial to writing. That is one of the major factors to me taking on the task of running my own website. Despite being so drawn to writing, I am constantly fumbling about trying to figure out where to write and how to write rather than actually writing. I looked through endless resources covering topics like how to start my own blog, what the best tools to use were to get things off the ground, and where to find the best plug-ins to automate tasks; and that search would always result in and endless wave of product after platform after subscription promising to help me along my journey. Was any of it helpful? Not in the end, no.
This forced me to consider what drew me to writing. Was it perhaps the artistic release of writing my thoughts down? There is something to say about that feeling of having created something new that did not exist before. The purely human act of turning what did not exist into something that exists right in front of you is exhilarating. Even if what you set out to do ends up failing to meet your expectations, that disappointment and the journey leading up to the unfortunate conclusion carries with is many lessons that are quintessential to being human. The artistic release of writing my thoughts down is definitely a reason I made this website.
Was it perhaps because I wanted to create something that would produce a return on investment? It seems a very natural expectation to have, hoping to eventually make some sort of income via a hobby. Prudently, it makes a lot of sense. However, I struggled to align potential content that can be monetized with my desire to write creatively. That is not to say I will never lean that direction, but I did not put as much weight on monetizing content as I did finding a platform for an artistic release. While I may seek eventually to produce a return on investment, it was not considered as a deciding factor like I did the artistic release.
Was it perhaps because I hoped someone would find my content interesting and engaging? Well, yes, that is a big part of why I decided to make this website. I do hope that my writing is of some interest to someone in this world. I am generally disinclined to proactively seek out real-life social interaction, and as such it seemed like an ample step outside my comfort zone to learn a new skill such as website development just to make my own platform from which to share run-on sentences about things I find interesting. Very logical indeed, wouldn’t you agree? I do hope someone finds my content engaging and interesting, and that is definitely a reason I made this website.
In the end, it became about me being confident I could learn how to start a website, even with very little background in website development. As odd as it feels to admit that it was intimidating to learn that skill, it really was. I wondered how I could make something like a website with as little experience as I had. I wondered if what I made would remotely resemble a personal blog. I wondered constantly if I missed anything when I set things up and started actually writing this post. I was wondering about a lot of things, but what I wasn’t doing was focusing on what it took to build confidence that I could learn this skill.
Sometimes it just takes doing something to build confidence in it. So I am focusing on building confidence that I can learn this skill by practicing it. The journey that leads me wherever I’m headed is bound to be a quintessentially human one. See you along the way.
-John