Insanely Interested Grows Up
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!
I have tried to predict the future many times. And looking back at my success rate it’s rather clear that predicting is not something I’m very good at. (Luckily, according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I’m not the only one — you suck at predicting just as much as I do!)
Predicting the future is hard. It’s pretty much beyond the capability of the human mind. But still, we love to do it.
I have shared my ideas: how I was going to move my blog to a new domain, or how I was going to put out a book by the end of July.
But plans always change: I still haven’t completed my book (and actually, I’m not even doing my morning routine anymore — my brother is). I still haven’t made much money online (speaking of which, check out Naomi’s SEO School; it’s back, and definitely worth reading).
And the blog move didn’t happen quite the way I had planned.
As you may remember, for a few months now, I have been talking about how I would move this blog to a new domain, insanelyinterested.com, change the layout a bit, but otherwise continue pretty much the way I have been running this blog until now.
All the time, I was working towards making the move happen. I even bought a copy of the Premium News Theme and started customizing it. I imported all my existing posts, divided them into new categories and did some editing to make them fit the more niche way of approaching the topic.
But it didn’t seem right.
I didn’t want to give up on my existing personal blog, and at the same time I felt that I should try something different that would make the new blog more useful to the reader than this one has ever been. Just importing the posts and continuing from there seemed like the lamest thing in the world to do.
I needed a fresh start.
Once again, future had shown its face, and it was quite different from what I imagined back in June.
I gave up on the premium theme and started building a theme of my own with a vision in my head:
This will be a blog where content is king. The theme will provide the bare basics to support the idea that every post is laid out differently. Every single post will be of such quality that it can make its way to the Digg front page. In this blog, every post will be a piece of art.
This should also allow me to relax a bit on this personal blog and make this a new kind of an experiment on what can come out of a personal when it’s done in a smart way. More about that in my next post.
Today I’m happy to announce that my new blog is live. Insanely Interested has been launched, and it’s only waiting for you to check it out.
From now on, the new Insanely Interested is where the most important posts on being insanely interested in everything will be posted.
I plan to put out a new post once in every 1 to 2 weeks, so that I can make sure that each post brings up new ideas and information that is worth the wait. The first post is out now, talking more about what I believe blogging should be about: Text is Art, Content is King.
The next one is scheduled to go out on October 15th, and it will be the post about being insanely interested in everything; a post in which I collect all the ideas from the past 1.5 years and summarize what I have learned so far. Mark it in your calendars — you don’t want to miss this one.
Only time will tell what comes out of this new blog. I have big hopes for it, but if I am wrong in my analysis of what you guys want to read online right now, it’s also possible that Insanely Interested will be a total flop.
But I have to take the risk — that’s the only way I will ever know: When you can’t predict, you have to put your heart out there, take a chance, and see what happens.
Now, go check out the new blog. I hope you like it!
At the end of the week, we’ll talk more about the future of Jarkko Laine dot com. Right now, cheers! This one is for making your ideas come true!
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October 6th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Jarkko,
I’ve been a web designer for about 5 years now. I love writing, sharing about life a spirituality - and am as insanely interested in everything as much as Barbra Sher could ever describe - a real Scanner at heart.
You’ll notice I don’t have a blog address. I’m stuck at the moment - at the same place as you were. I blogged for a while, in retrospect I had quite a lot of hits - but couldn’t ever be satisfied with it - the blog just didn’t have focus!
I figured if I post on Topic A and get subscribers, I’ll scare them off by Topic B - but then don’t have enough of either topic to run a consistent blog! It’s nice to see what you’ve done, and I’ll be doing something similar when I get around to it.
Rest assured, still subscribed to both feeds now!
October 6th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Congrats on the launch!
And don’t feel too bad about the whole predicting the future thing. I can’t do it either. It always amazes me though how no matter how bad I am at doing it, I still keep trying.
And if you can’t predict the future, the reverse is also true. It drives me crazy when people look to the past and say “if only I had done this or that everything would be different.” Our choices affect our lives in so many complicated ways, you can never say with any certainty that if you had done x, y would follow. Learn from the past, fine. But don’t beat yourself up about it.
Sorry, not exactly related here but you got me thinking, which is a rare enough occurrence for me that I had to write it down :) Thanks for the thought provocation.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Great job! I like the clean design and easy to read font size.
Personally, I always like to read a blog post with some image in the post. It makes me want to see what the post is all about.
I have not done any good job to redesign my blog for three years now. I realized that people still come to read some of my most popular post. It has nothing to do with the design and money, but it does solve some people’s problem.
I can’t predict my web site’s future, but I can predict that it’s growing for sure. Money will come when your traffic is up! Keep it up!
October 6th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
@Dave: Good to hear that my decision makes sense to you! I’m looking forward to seeing what your new blogs will turn out to be.
@Jamie: Thanks for the support! I think you’re right, there is a positive side in the complexities of this life. If the causality was easy to grasp we would always be second-guessing our actions. Now we can’t — we just will never know what would have happened if we would have made different choices.
@Terence: Thanks! I’m sure I’ll be still using images in my posts, but with the new design, I wanted to free myself from always having to have an image in my posts. In this blog, although I think the images give a nice touch, I sometimes feel like a slave to them, if you know what I mean.
In the new blog, I started with more of this plain canvas approach were the blog template itself doesn’t dictate much of anything regarding the posts.
And I think you make a great point: what really matters the most is whether you can help solve some real problems people are facing in their lives.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:55 am
Jarkko - congrats on the launch! Your hardwork has paid off because your new site looks truly awesome.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Thanks, Mark! The next task then is to finalize the next near term plan for jarkkolaine.com and start marketing insanelyinterested.com heavily :)
So, everyone, feel free to pass on the message about “text is art, content is king” ;)
October 10th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
J viens par ce présent message vous informere de mon ordination pastorale qui sera au moi de Février 2009 à Diouroup.
Vous étes coordialement invités à cette fête grandiose.
Votre Frére et Ami
Pierre Adama FAYE
October 12th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Jarkko,
I has been a little while since I have commented on your blog. I just wanted to give you an update and thank you for the advice you gave me on starting a blog. I finally got one up and running. Good luck with the new site.
middleclassdream@wordpress.com
October 20th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I just stumbled across your site, so I don’t know about your old ramblings, but I really like the look and feel of this page. It’s slick, green and I love the use of fonts in the headlines. The question is, will you manage to maintain both blogs, or will they both slide? Probably this is just about some sort of natural selection experiment ;)
October 21st, 2008 at 9:11 am
@sven: That’s a great question. And (un)fortunately(?), only time will tell.
My plan is to change the focus of this blog a bit so that the two blogs would complement each other. This is important as in the current forms the blogs would compete with each other a bit too much (mostly regarding how I spend my time).
Let’s see what will come out of this. And welcome! I hope I can serve you well!
October 26th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Very nice Jarkko! Love the minimalistic design. I’ll be adding it to my list of RSS Feeds. ;)