Making it real

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Julius caesar crossing the rubicon

Julius caesar crossing the rubicon

Whenever you start a new project, there are two fears that can keep you from even starting:

  1. The inability to see what it will look like when it's finished
  2. The fear of its failing altogether

For the first fear, of course, there's nothing for it but to dive right in with your ABORTIVE ATTEMPT and then shape it through your SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATIONS.  (Tomorrow we'll look at ways to do that.)

For the second fear, well, there's not a lot you can do about that, is there?  (I choose not to discuss ABANDONMENT at this point.)

Today I crossed a couple of Rubicons, in their way more definitive than establishing this domain and website.  Since the whole purpose of this website is to create an online presence for the book I'm writing about the creative process, it's mostly a marketing tool.  That means I have to have ways to reach out the world and create "buzz," as we say.

That means, first, creating a new email to which I can link all the efforts—which I have done.  Email me, why don't you, at dale@lichtenbergianism.com and tell me how brave I am?

Second, it means creating a MailChip account.  Yes, I'm going to create a newsletter from my blog.  You should subscribe to it.  Yes, I will build an email list.  Yes, I will use it to let people know if I'm performing a workshop or talk somewhere.  You know, like marketers do.

Two major jumps off of cliffs is enough for one day.  Next up?  Twitter. 

This is getting real.

Procrastination... or is it?

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Here's a great example of TASK AVOIDANCE: rather than concentrate all my thinkings onto what should be happening on the front page of this website, I've been working on the précis versions of the Nine Precepts. 

Not only that, but I've been avoiding that task by coming up with the graphics for each one.  (I use Pixelmator, a really powerful and inexpensive alternative to Photoshop for the Mac.  Windows users, you have alternatives as well.)

So far I have:

ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS

ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS

successive approximation

successive approximation

More as I get to them.

update:

WASTE BOOKS

WASTE BOOKS

GESTALT

GESTALT

Not so sure about WASTE BOOKS.

A little further

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Yesterday was all about the ABORTIVE ATTEMPT of getting the domain of Lichtenbergianism.com purchased, and then figuring out which template would best suit the needs of my plans for world domination through procrastination.  Not the easiest task in the world.  It called for a lot of Facebook breaks.

Today, it's been SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION as I struggle to start filling in gaps (GESTALT) and shaping my future by creating more and more of the site.  (I began by writing a blog post over on my personal blog: pure TASK AVOIDANCE.)

I have resorted to STEALING FROM THE BEST: go have a look at personalkanban.com.  It has everything I want: the basic philosophy they're promoting, a book to sell, and available consulting services.  It was very helpful in deciding several issues here.  For example, yesterday I thought the blog should be front and center, but today I've put a real Home page back up front, from which I can fill visitors in on Lichtenbergianism and what it means before they begin reading how I (and others) using it.

I began structuring the Nine Precept pages and will next come up with the précis version of each precept.  Tomorrow, perhaps.