Just start somewhere
Not even the country borders we grew up with are immutable. (Image by Michael Gaida)
Have you ever scrolled all the way back to the beginning of someone’s social media feed, YouTube channel, or blog?
Unless they have deleted their early efforts or actually began their journey elsewhere, you will likely find content that is not at the level of professionalism, refinement, and focus of their most recent work.
Many creators change their username or business name along the way. They tinker with the promise of their brand. They get better equipment or graphics. They alter the format of their presentation. They might wind up talking about something totally different from their initial topic.
A lot of us want to figure everything out and get it exactly right before we publish our first thing. But when you study what is out there, it becomes clear that the people who are actively, successfully sharing their work and gaining a following for it didn’t do that. They found a place to begin and got going. You can, too.
When you’re doing something new that’s uniquely yours, you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. There’s no road map, so there is no way around the uncertainty. There’s no way to get the right answer. You just have to start somewhere, anywhere, and find a path forward from that point.
In practice, this might mean sharing your ideas or your creative work with a few trusted people to get feedback and guidance. Or you could do research to get the lay of the land and get more information about how to proceed. Or, you simply sit down and write or paint or compose.
Whatever you do, track it. Document your efforts in a journal or on a spreadsheet. Treat it like the work that it is.
Some of us will do especially well if we put our creations out there in public right from the get-go. Others of us will require more thorough planning or preparation. But regardless of our exact timeline, we must recognize that our work will not be fully realized, and it’s not supposed to be. It’s a starting point. It’s the first iteration. It’s an initial foray. It’s an experiment.
But what do you do when you don’t have a business name or a website or a product or fill-in-the-blank? Isn’t this thing a prerequisite for doing the next thing? Nah. Start with the part that you can see, the part you do know how to do, and go from there.
When I started this blog, I took a basic Squarespace template and deleted everything but the blog page. Then, I wrote an article and published it. I did it again the next day.
I happened to have a name and domain name, but I did not need one. I’m not even sure if I’ll stick with the one I have. I still don’t have a logo. But I’ve built a profitable business from this blog, doing work that I had no idea I’d be doing when I started. (I thought I would be promoting an online school for kids!) Just goes to show ya.
If I had planned everything fully, I might not have been willing to pivot when other opportunities arose. Instead, I did just enough to find something that worked, and then continued in that direction.
It may seem weird to begin in media res, but all the best stories do. The author or filmmaker will fill in the backstory later. For now, jumping into the action gets us invested more quickly in what happens next. And as for what’s next, that’s what we’ll be trying to figure out as we go. Getting underway gets us closer.
