I suck at being a human on the web

After watching and listening to a lot of solo and early stage entrepreneurs lately, I’ve come to the realization that I suck at being a real relatable human on the web.

I’m not sure what caused this. Maybe it was years of working at an agency and always making things as polished and professional as I could for clients. Maybe it was something I started as a young adult, trying to do freelance web design as a high schooler trying to make my “company” sound bigger than it really was. Maybe its just having a family now and wanting to keep some thing private and personal for my own sake. Or maybe it’s being a freelancer and always feeling like my clients are looking over my shoulder and wondering why I’m not working on their project at that exact moment.

My Twitter posts for the past few years have basically been “Hey – I launched something, you should check it out…”. And then nothing after that. I wasn’t really a part of the greater community in general helping people out and commenting on their stuff. I didn’t tell anyone I was working on it, I didn’t share the challenges in creating it, and I didn’t ask anybody else’s opinion about it!

So forgive me. I’m learning.

My goals this year are to participate and share with the online maker community. I have wisdom I can share, and I need their collective wisdom to succeed at all. I can’t keep making things in a vacuum and expecting they will blow up as soon as I put them online.

Here are some of my goals in the coming year:

  1. To post one or two helpful or interesting tweets a day.
  2. To blog once a week about something I’ve learned, or something I’m struggling with as I work
  3. To participate in the MakerLog and IndieHackers websites a few times a week.
  4. To offer some things of great value on the web, for free, with no expectations of how they will benefit me or make money
  5. To continue promoting the MPLS Digital Makers meetup group