Why I finally decided to start a blog

Back in 1998, I made my first real, publicly accessible website.  It was NeilsMachine.com (long since taken down), and it was a “blog” before blogs were blogs.  I talked about nothing at all, because I really had nothing to say.  Shortly after my NeilsMachine days, I got caught up in my professional career and let all my personal sites languish and die.  When I did my own consultancy, I never managed to get a website up, which always bothered me.  The challenge, I found, is that when would I have time to do my own website when I was building sites for others?  I made several good stabs at it – including one design that to this day is still very cool – but they never saw the light of day.

Today, my motivation is simply one of needing to express myself.  Cliché as it may sound, it’s something I really need to do so that I don’t inappropriately soapbox or burst into soliloquy at the drop of a hat – a bad habit that I admit I am all too prone. I have a lot to say, and many of the topics I’m passionate about require more depth than a short burst on Twitter or Facebook can afford.

As for what the blog will be about, when it comes to my personal life, frankly, it’s not that interesting.  I could muse about my trip to the farmers market, or my take on something in the news, or something related to one of my hobbies, but I can’t see myself writing about any of that – at least not regularly.  No, if I was going to do a blog, it would be about my professional life, which is full of adventure, drama, unexpected twists and turns and mistakes: Lots and lots of mistakes.  Indeed, one of my drivers for creating a blog is so that others can hopefully avoid that many mistakes I have made.

The final push, however, was in an exit interview with my (now ex) CTO.  As I was explaining my time there, at one point he stopped me and said, “You should write a book.”  You can take that statement many ways, from the benevolent to malevolent, but I chose to take it as the former, for our conversation had a congenial tone.  That final push was perhaps all I needed.

With this being my first posting, I can only say welcome.  I will try to entertain as I pull you into my professional life, but above all I hope to share with you my many misadventures so that at worst you can laugh at my follies, and at best find comfort in the fact that there is someone else who may think as you do.

Welcome, this should be fun.