On the fear of being exposed

It's a strange thing, right, starting a blog in 2026 at the ripe old age of fifty-one? I must be showing my age. These things were cool in the early oughts. Having second-guessed starting one a couple of times, I came around to the idea that old-fashioned ideas are sometimes some of the best. So here I am bringing some of the good things back.

No small part of this thinking is my default preference for reticence. Throughout my career I've largely hidden. I had pubic portfolios when I was a designer. One is still online as a piece of history. But the purpose of those was for getting work. I haven't published much and I've generally kept my thoughts to myself. I'm okay in front of a crowd, but I've never gone in for public speaking. I never put myself forward for awards, as others have. I haven't really ever connected myself with my work publicly. I've never spoken about it or voluntarily told other people about it. I'm one of those people who twists their stomach internally when somebody new asks, 'So what do you do?'

So, what do I do? And why don't I talk about it?

At the moment I am strictly speaking 'between' jobs. By that, I mean what most people consider real jobs: ones that pay a regular salary and where the landscape is settled and the purpose is defined. I left the startup I founded a couple of years ago. It's still going, and I hope very much for its success. And I think they're really onto something with their newest product. I'd been there for nearly 12 years when I left, and it was time. Since then, I worked on various ideas, taking almost a year to pitch a few of them, and not get very far. They were grand and big and serious. Ultimately they were too much for me to pick off at the time. So I got a real job again. But I'm out the other side of that now too.

I have a plan of sorts: It's to find a new something, rigorously work on it, and turn it into a real something. And, with perseverance, make a grand success of it. I want to make this something stick.

In fact, part of the idea is to be deliberately broad. I'm working on three and a bit things currently. Starting small. I think small is good because small provides space for plurality and plurality provides options. All of them involve making my own way, doing my thing, applying myself, no one but me to blame, no one but me responsible. My great big yawning mortgage and the family to support are the carrot and stick.

And what are these ideas? Well, all of them are businesses. One of them is a pretty straightforward e-commerce idea. It's something I was playing with before I got the most recent real job. You'll hear more about this along the way.

The second one I've parked for a bit. I built a prototype over the last couple of months. It's reasonably complex, reasonably technical, and probably what you would figure in this new landscape to be an AI-driven product. It's a life utility. It works, I'm using it, dogfooding, as they say. Sometimes the dog food is nourishing. Other times it catches in my throat and I think I still need some work on it. I'm a little way away from getting it to the point where I'd release it to anyone.

The half one is not even a half, really. It's more the possibility of adding another thing, perhaps a collaborative thing. It's pre-embryonic, but I list it because it is a reality or something that might pop onto the agenda.

The third idea of the 3.5 is one that I started on a whim about a year ago. It took me maybe three days to hack together a prototype while I was exasperated by the job market. It's almost ludicrously simple, this one, and I don't know if that makes it extraordinarily naïve or demonstrably powerful. It's also the one I'm currently most excited about. And if I write about anything, this is likely to be the first one.

Ok, so many secrets.

As I said up there, I've never really put myself out there. I find it difficult to talk about what I do. I'm much more inclined to think through problems and believe that solving them at my desk is what's best to do. I realise that means I disregard a huge chunk of what it is to build something. It's obvious what I'm missing, right? I'm missing the ability to communicate my ideas, and I'm missing the experience of being out there making connections. I'm missing the ability to bring people to what I build. That's clearly a problem. I have many skills, but I am probably the world's most reluctant marketer.

So I'm here to make a change. A manifold change. It means training myself, not only in techniques and tricks and hustles, but in confidence and personal comfort. It means trying on humility. It means risking criticism. It means being honest about what I'm doing and what I want to achieve. It means being vulnerable.

And this blog is all part of it. My own means of immersion therapy. Starting a blog in 2026 is the right thing, I think. I love the written word. I'm not ready to be a vlogger, yet. I think there's some kind of intimate glory in documenting and sharing, and for the first time I'm going to try and let go.

I want to expose what I'm working on and take people along on the journey of how I'm doing it. That could be technical, practical, product-based ... all the things I'm comfortable with. And it could be public, presentational and social, all the things that make me clam-up, run away and hide behind my laptop.

I hope I've realised, what's the worst that can happen? People might suddenly realise I'm building a business. Am I too snobby to think that that is a valid way of feeding my family? Is it too risky? What if everything falls apart? What if I present to you all these 3.5 mystery ideas and you think they're all shit? No, really, what if they are actually shit? What if people think what a ridiculous thing to be doing? What if I tell you I'm A and then next year I have to turn around and disavow it and become B? What if it all takes so long that I have to sign up for another real job? What if people call me out as being a hypocrite for talking up A and B, then after all opting for that? What if people see my crazy product branding and think it ought to be pink not yellow? What if people openly criticise my typography? What if I think my technical solution is not the way a real developer would approach it? What if people are utterly bored by my meandering inner dialogue?

The benefit of being oldish is that I don't have to care too much, do I? I don't know yet. It's the beginning of my journey. I still care, but maybe this is a fiery baptism of caring less, or at least refocusing priorities onto valuable things rather than fears and inhibitions.

I will tell you what these ideas are. Hopefully I'll get right into sharing them. For now, I need to make a start and I need to pledge to open myself up. There's this mortal fear of being exposed. Here I am. I thank you for helping me get over who I am.