I’m always caught unprepared at the end of the year. Great hopes and ambitions have a way of getting lost under twelve months of unremarkable daily routine. This year, rather than abandoning my time to the fickleness of human memory, I want to start producing something, to give dimension and permanence to my experiences. I hope that in doing so I’ll occasionally create something that others find useful.
And so I blog. The irony is not lost on me that in the fifteen months I’ve worked at Technorati I’ve yet to write a single post. My perfectionist tendencies are largely to blame: I'm afraid of exposing my unpracticed writing in public. A better perspective is that blogging is a process, not a state of being in which beautiful prose springs fully-formed from one’s head. Perhaps, like Norman Mailer, with time I can get the bad writing out of my system. Or perhaps I just need enough practice to find my voice.
Ultimately, as with any process, the most important thing is to get started. After sullying the blank page with these first few hastily-written paragraphs, the rest will inevitably be much easier.
New projects, like new years, are full of promise. But while the ineluctable passing of time ensures that the potential of a new year is eventually (if imperfectly) realized, the intoxication of perfection can leave a project indefinitely suspended. The first day of the new year seems like an excellent time to let go, embrace imperfection, and just start.