Picking an Audience

Writing has always been a big struggle for me. Some sentences come easily, some feel like pulling teeth. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I know what good writing looks like, so when my writing doesn’t match up to my expectations in my head, I’m not satisfied.

I could give up, but I won’t.

The reason why requires a bit of a back story.

I know what good writing looks like because I learned to love reading in high school and devoured a bookshelf of classics. Hemingway, Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe (a big favorite for a while). All of them wrote so well and really inspired me. I’m not a novel writer though. So, I went to college and got a business degree. I started reading more business books and, at one of my first jobs, I subscribed to Wired magazine on a whim. I instantly loved it. Instead of the classics’ stories of random human struggles, Wired’s were about people in the business world, creating things and solving problems. It was so cool to see a description of a person–whether writer or subject–and it would say something like this:

John Smith was born in a small town in Montana where he learned to program at age 12. In college, he met Joe Schmo and the two created AwesomeApp (awesomeapp.com). They are dedicated to educating/helping [something] through their work. You can follow him on Twitter at @johnsmith and at johnsmith.com.

So cool. This John guy is killing it, I’d think, all the way down to the firstNamelastName Twitter handle and URL (I’m a sucker for details like that). I love going to the sites that are mentioned and seeing what they look like. Sometimes, they are full on blogs and sometimes, they’re just a quick summary about the person. It’s a very unique, very modern expression of personality.

There are tons of famous people in the world, but the people in these magazines are famous for reasons that matter. Being a good actor or football player is great, and they do serve the purpose of entertainment, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who won an Oscar or championship. Building a smoke detector that people actually use or even being on a team that creates amazing software for businesses–that matters.

I wanted to do stuff that matters. I’m not exactly brimming with million dollar ideas, and I can’t program very well, but I wanted to start down the road. The first step was to buy a domain and start blogging. I want to get better at writing, interact with some communities, and maybe come up with a good idea or two. It’s not much, but at least you can follow me at @leelkennedy and email me at lee@leelkennedy.com now!

That’s why I’m not stopping. The flywheel is barely moving, but I’m getting it started.

Here’s the rub though.

All of these people and companies I’m reading about have clearly defined goals and projects. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be worth covering. Right now, I don’t have a big goal or project in mind. I’m trying to learn some basic programming, from VBA to create some Excel magic, to JavaScript for Google Doc scripts, to learning some HTML/CSS and building Steph and my wedding site in notepad. That has been a great learning experience. I’m also reading a lot–from high level business stories to textbook-like Analytics books. I even tried to switch up my sleeping schedule to biphasic for two weeks in an effort to have more time in the day to get stuff done (it didn’t work out). But I haven’t been doing much otherwise.

This makes writing a bit difficult, because I don’t know what to write about.

I love rock climbing and have gotten good responses from those posts in the past, but it is mostly a hobby. I’ve been doing SEO for almost 4 years, but so have 1,000 other people (what would I write about?). I’ve been focusing on Analytics for around 2 years as well, and love it, but what is there new to say?

 

Anyways. All that to say: I’m excited about this blog, and I’m excited about things I’ve been learning, but I haven’t decided on my audience yet. Bear with me. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the meanderings.