Rachel and I would be overjoyed to take you, through this blog, along on our adventure. But we’d like to warn you: We’re here to be our truest selves. We are going to express ourselves in ways not every reader will like or appreciate.
I’ll probably knock capitalism once every 1,000 or so words. I imagine one, and probably both, of us will spend an entire post on how much we miss our furball, Alice. I’ll write at least a couple of posts in a bad mood, if for no other reason than to try it.
I don’t mean to be brash. What this blog, and really this whole adventure, represents to me is freedom: the freedom to have bad days, to discuss topics of my choice, and to generally be myself as a writer.
I have no publication guidelines to follow. I don’t have to, and almost never will, take a business perspective. You’d better believe I’m going to indulge my own punctuation preferences. But most importantly, I’m going to get a whole lot of things wrong, and I’m going to enjoy it.
To Establish Failure
One of the best parts of this step in my journey is that it’s not my job to get it right. My current job (“Bobs need jobs,” Rachel and I joke) is to pour it all out.
I am here to let my ideas stand not aside from but amidst my mistakes. If I can own my mistakes, I can let myself fail. And if I can let myself fail, I can try all sorts of things I’ve avoided but want to experience.
I hope Karen or Warren, or any of the other talented editors I’ve known, point out my shaky analogies and presumptions passed off as facts. I’d be honored to know someone reads my work so closely. And, in fact, it would fit the experience I’m after: beginning again.
To Insure Nothing
One of the keys to innovation — something that I cannot wait to write an entire post about, having repeatedly covered it from clients’ eyes — is the beginner’s mindset.
I have succeeded my whole life (as Rachel has in hers). To be bad at something feels like abandoning some part of myself — when, to the contrary, it’s exactly what I need to be whole.
So, I’m here to practice. I’m not here to get clicks or shares. I don’t care about ranking for relevant keywords. I’m not trying to become the pre-eminent resource on anything but myself.
On that, I can build.
To Provide For Ourselves
There is a particular outcome of this exercise of self-expression that I’m hoping for, and that which I recognize appears at odds with what I just said: Rachel and I are artists, and we want this space to help us better understand what we have to offer the world.
To be clear, we don’t expect to master anything, much less sell it, on the Appalachian Trail. What we do expect is to unlock new doors for ourselves individually and to find interesting, marketable intersections of our skills.
It’s a big bet. But the secret is, I’m here to lose. I’m here to try something, screw it up, try something else, and then probably mess that up, too.
Does that sound like a plan? No in the literal sense, but yes in the idiomatic one? Good; we’ll get along great on this trip.
