So many times over the past two decades have I tried to start a personal website. Some with grand statements of intent, others with introspective rumination over how to try to find an online voice in an ever-changing internet landscape that is so vastly different from its original form and rampant with data leaks, content scrapers, and the evolving dangers of AI. And each time, they’ve all ended the same way: abandoned over the need to prioritize other obligations in life and the doubts over self-expressing online; that’s even circumstantially been the case presently.
But as 2025 begins with the expectation of it being a harbinger year of challenges, from the global levels all the way down to the personal, it also comes with a certain confidence to be had from all the lessons learned and ridiculousness endured throughout 2024, from the national stage all the way down to the individual.
I’ve long joked that I need to find the way to start living life with the unearned confidence of those small breed dogs always willing to scrap way above their weight class. Better and simpler I’m finding it to accept and step into my earned confidence, and committing to leaving the footprint I’ve always wanted to make.
There are already at least three personal essays waiting to be extrapolated from the above, but all in good time; self-patience is an understated key part of operating effectively.