Why I started this blog
It seems that this is your first time to my blog. Welcome! In this blog I will share my ideas on how you can make a living in a way that feels good to you, your family, your environment and everyone around you. If you want to know more about me and this blog, check out my about page. And if you want to stay updated on my new posts, subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for stopping by!
A few days ago when chatting with a friend I promised him that I would write something about the meaning of this blog and the reasons why I am working on it. I planned to do this some day next week but as a coincidence Nate Whitehill asked the very question, “What motivated you to start blogging?“, in his blog yesterday. So there really was no other option than to start typing.
I think it all started about a year and a half ago when I found my way to Steve Pavlina’s blog. I had been maintaining many web sites before that, even writing some blog-like rantings, but Steve’s blog was the first real blog I started to follow on a regular basis. His writing style inspired me and I soon subscribed to his RSS feed.
That changed my surfing habits.
Before subscribing to Steve’s RSS feed I used to browse the web in the way most people do, googling for things and visiting a list of sites I was keeping in my bookmarks. But now that I had a feed reader all I was interested in was blogs. I soon collected a list of about 70 blogs I was following on a daily basis, and it just kept growing as I found more and more interesting blogs by clicking on the links I found in the posts I was reading.
That was too much so I had to cut the number down a bit (now it’s growing again, so I’ll have to do some more cutting pretty soon). But you get the point: at this point I was sucked in to the blogosphere and the next logical step was to start my own blog and really participate. I just couldn’t stay an outsider any longer.
Just having a blog is nice, but if you really want to make it work, you need to have a guiding idea that defines what the blog is all about. You need to know who you are writing it for and what kinds of topics you want to write about. So I started to write random thoughts to my tumble log while still trying to figure out what my blog should be all about and why I want to be doing it.
Finally it boiled down to a few key ideas:
1. Insanely interested in everything
It was my wife who first started describing me as being insanely interested in everything. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but for some reason it seemed that everyone who heard that description was nodding in agreement.
So I thought about it. A lot.
And then I realized that those four words might actually be the best four words I had ever found for explaining who I am. When I then started this blog it was clear to me that this had to be its guiding principle.
This blog is meant to be a learning experience to both you and me.
To me it’s a lesson in the world of blogging, but also a lesson about all the topics that I cover in my posts. Writing about something in a way that other people will benefit from it forces you to really think about the topic, and explaining something to other people is often the best way to master that something.
But that’s not the only thing I’m learning by writing this blog. Just as important to me are the lessons that I get from interacting with my readers. Sometimes it’s a new view point to a topic I covered in my post. Sometimes it’s an “aha!” moment when someone explains my thoughts in a better way than I could have done. Sometimes something just as simple as a person saying “Hi!” in an e-mail message can serve as a lesson about life.
Thank you for leaving your comments and sending me e-mail. I hope that the discussion continues to grow and we can share more and more interesting ideas with each other in the future. Don’t hesitate to leave a note if you have something to say about a specific blog post, or send e-mail if you have something else you want to ask me about.
2. Interacting with the world
Lately I’ve been working on a short description of this blog to use for marketing it a bit to advertisers and web directories. Here goes my current version:
A blog about creating software in an honest, positive way that feels good to you, your family, your customers and your environment.
I want to make a difference.
My impact might not be huge, but what I can do is to throw my ideas out in the open and see what comes back. Maybe some of the ideas catch fire and come back as more polished versions, while some of them get shot down. And that’s how it should be. That’s why I call it “interacting with the world” and not “changing the world”.
- Way too many people are struggling with their work. Either there is too much of it or it doesn’t feel like the right thing for them to be doing. I’m waiting to see a world in which people don’t work just for the money but instead because they really want to do what they are doing. It’s probably not going to happen fast, but we can get there if we want to, one person at a time.
- Too many people are still forced to choose between their career and family. More and more people are making the right choice by valuing family over work, but I still think that it’s a choice that we shouldn’t have to make. To me having a rewarding career means living a life you are happy with, not getting lots of promotions and pay rises.
- A few days ago some visitor found my blog by typing “don’t be a programmer” in Google. When I noticed those keywords in my site statistics it made me laugh, but as I thought about it more I realized that this person had a point: We shouldn’t be just programmers and forget about our customers, but instead try to be approachable and make sure that our customers get what they really ask for. Making your customer feel comfortable after all is more important than knowing all the latest algorithms.
- And last but not least, the environment. Don’t worry, the planet will survive global warming and other problems just fine. The problem is that the changes like rising sea levels and bigger storms are threatening our way of life. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy my life so much that I wouldn’t want it to change for worse anytime soon. I want to keep coding and writing which is why I think we need to find ways to work and do business in a way that is good for our environment as well.
3. Building a career
I named my blog after myself to emphasise on the fact that what I write on my blog is always a piece of who I am. I try to be as open as possible while still keeping the reader, you, as the main focus. This way, by reading my thoughts you’ll learn to know who this guy Jarkko Laine actually is.
And that’s my way of shaping my future.
My long term goal is that by writing valuable content to my readers every day I will one day be able to make a living by maintaining this blog and building online services that match with the values described above. So if you start seeing some ads here and there, don’t worry, it’s just me trying to become a professional blogger. But if you feel that I’m putting in too much advertisement, let me know. After all, you come first and my personal goals only second.
Thanks for visiting and reading my ideas! I hope you enjoy your stay and come back soon, maybe even move in and grab my RSS feed. If this was your first visit, you might find something interesting by checking out the most popular posts listed on the right sidebar.
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August 13th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Hi. I found your site through Matt’s. Great blog you have and I share a lot what you wrote.
Thanks for all the tips. Very nice and neat.
August 13th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Hey Shine With Grace!
Thanks for stopping by, it feels great to hear that people share my thoughts. I hope you enjoy the future posts too :)