It’s my blog birthday. On 23 April 2007, after having attended the New Humanism Conference at Harvard, a friend and I started a joint atheism blog. Two years later — which is to say, one year ago today — I struck out on my own, starting this little site here.
Though I haven’t done quite as much yet with this slice of existence as I’d like to, it has nonetheless been an interesting year. I practiced a bit of web design. I aided in the takedown of a local creationist. I had an editorial published in my alma mater’s student newspaper. And that’s just taken from the meager scraps of life that actually managed to find their way onto this site. In the past year, I’ve attended three skepticism conferences (The Amaz!ng Meeting 7, NECSS2009, and NECSS2010) and become more involved in Boston Skeptics. I’ve been teaching myself how to program in Python. I learned how to play Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. I’ve forged new friendships and strengthened old ones.
But there’s still so much I want to do. So many ideas unrealized.
Ze Frank’s “the show,” a year-long project organized around a daily video blog, was an unexpectedly transformative force for me during its run from March 2006 to 2007. Today, I got to thinking about the episode “bittersweet,” from the last week of the show’s run. This project, this website, made the transition from zero to one a year ago. Zero posts to one post. And from there, a few more. Now that it’s making the transition from zero to one year old, how can I grow and improve?
Ze talks about confidence as it applies to creativity. For me, a big part of it comes down to the confidence to finish starting, to take the final steps in the transition from zero to one. Once you make the transition from “starting” to “doing,” accountability sets in hard. Accountability forces us to get stuff done and make what we do actually count for something, but it also invites judgment if we fail to meet expectations (be they others’ or our own).
In the coming year, I hope to have the confidence to finish starting and start doing.