Shipulski On Design

I started writing because I had no mentor to help me.  I thought I could help myself grow.  I thought I could write to better understand my ideas.  I thought I could use writing to mentor myself.  I tried it.  It was difficult.  It was scary.  But I started.

You will see the title, but you won’t see my scrap paper scribblings that emerge as I struggle to converge on a topic.  Prismatic shapes, zig-zags, arrows pointing toward nothing, nested triangles, cross-hatched circles, words that don’t go together, random words.  And when a topic finds me, I move to the laptop, but you won’t see that either.

You will see the sentences and paragraphs that hang together.  You won’t see the clustered fragments of almost sentences, the disjointed paragraphs, the out-of-sequence logic, the inconsistency of tense, and the wrong words.  You won’t see my head pressed to the kitchen table as I struggle to unshuffle the deck.

You will see the density of my writing.  You won’t see the preening.

You will see a curated image and a shout out to the owner.  You won’t see me spend 30 minutes searching for an image that supports the blog post obliquely.

You will see the research underpinning the main points, but you won’t see me doing it.  Books on and off the shelf, books on the floor, technical papers in my backpack, old presentations in forgotten folders, YouTube, blogs, and podcasts.  Far too many podcasts.

You will see this week’s blog post on Wednesday night, Thursday morning, or Thursday afternoon, depending on your time zone.  You won’t see the 750+ blog posts from 15 years of Wednesdays.

When it was time to send out my first blog post, I was afraid.  I questioned whether the content was worthy, whether I was right, and whether it made sense. I struggled to push the button.  I hesitated, hesitated again, and pushed the button.  And nothing bad happened.

When it was time to send out this blog post, I was confident the content was worthy, confident I was right, and confident that it made sense.   I put myself out there, and when it was time to hit the button, I did not hesitate because I wrote it for me.

Image credit — Charlie Marshall

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