I have a tendency to avoid doing stuff until the conditions are just right. Can’t film that video series yet because I’m not satisfied with how my mic sounds. Can’t paint that mini yet because I need to get better at drybrushing first. Can’t publish that website yet because I don’t have the sidebar set up the way I want it. Can’t start that campaign yet because the perfect supplement for it was just announced, but it doesn’t come out until next year. You name it, I’ve used an excuse like this to put it off.
A lot of people operate on this false assumption that to be successful, the conditions have to be perfect. I know because I’m one of them, but I’ve also met a lot of folks who have the same struggle. In reality, the conditions are never absolutely perfect, and only rarely are they nearly perfect. In reality, the most beautiful pieces of art, the most engaging relationships, and the most memorable experiences, are powerful because of their imperfections. They’re meaningful because of the struggle. They’re most meaningful when they emerge from people embracing and overcoming imperfect circumstances to create… to love… to live.
Okay, so that got real deep real quick. I was making a point, but I wasn’t trying to wax philosophical.
Let’s circle back to this ugly little blog. After sharing content almost exclusively on YouTube for several years, I decided I wanted to start blogging again. It’s mostly because I have so many ideas that are still sitting in a giant Google Folder, and I’m tired of them collecting digital dust instead of being shared. I love YouTube, and I’ll keep posting videos there, but sharing ideas there can be so inefficient. The process of scripting to recording to editing to posting is incredibly time consuming. I have hundreds of video scripts in various stages of completion that will likely never be spoken in front of a camera because it takes so long to get through that process.
I’m tired of keeping those ideas to myself. A part of me needs to share them, and they are wasted if I’m the only one who gets to benefit from them. Granted, many of my ideas are mediocre at best and would likely benefit nobody, but occasionally I’ll hit on a nugget of wisdom or inspiration that’s downright shameful not to share.
I could go on about how it takes so long to get an idea from my brain to a YouTube video, but at the end of the day, the conditions just haven’t been right lately. Logically, I recognize that the most impactful things I’ve ever done in my life happened during the struggle, not after I managed to get things together. Yet here I’ve been, wasting time waiting for the right conditions rather than forging forward and creating something that might be awesome.
So I’ll be sharing things here on this WordPress blog that I set up as an experiment a couple years ago. When I created this blog, I was just toying around with IFTTT to see if I could automatically post content across platforms. Apparently it worked, as I came back to this blog to find that links to my videos have been posted here throughout the time that IFTTT was active. I’m keeping them, and I might even go back to make them visually appealing at some point.
It’ll be a while, though. For the moment, and for the foreseeable future, this blog is and will continue to be ugly. If I spent any more time trying to update the theme or fix the formatting, I would again be trying to set up the right conditions rather than just doing the important thing. The blog is ugly, and I’m cool with it. In time, I’ll tidy up around here, but at the moment I just need a not-YouTube place to share, and this is it.
Join me, friend, as I share nerdy anecdotes, pictures, and stories. Someday, maybe this ugly duckling of a blog will grow up to become something unexpectedly beautiful. Until then, thanks for being here and being along for the ride.
Copper Dragon Games 
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