Wed, 23 Sep 2009

Perils of Perfectionism

I began this blog in May 2004, largely as an experiment to see if this new-fangled blogging thing was something I wanted to do. I kept at it, more or less, until the end of 2007—by which time I’d decided that I did want to continue blogging.

And that’s when things went wrong. I had already more or less decided that I really needed two blogs—one for more technical material and one for all the rest. And I knew that I wanted some features that were not provided by the simple software that I had been using for my experiment. So it was then just a simple matter of choosing names for the new blogs and selecting one of the full-featured blogging platforms and I could get on with things.

Almost 20 months later, and I’m still wrestling with these weighty questions. And I’m completely out of what habit I had developed of writing. I have chosen and then rejected about a gazillion names for the new blogs; and I have chosen and then rejected and then re-chosen and then re-rejected just about every blogging platform in existence. Nothing seems to be just right for my needs.

And so, even more belatedly than I often manage to achieve it, I have come to realize that my perfectionism has become the obstacle to getting anything done.

The way forward from here now seems clear—I will resume writing posts in this blog (in a new location, but retaining its original URL) and when I make those difficult decisions about names and blogging platforms, I’ll announce them here and allow this blog to rest in peace.

Posted at: 17:24

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