Did you ever have a light bulb moment in your life? Something that you thought "this is a great idea and I think I can get behind this 100%!"
It's being required to give that 100% that will kill you because as it turns out, pulling off your light bulb moment and bringing it to reality will require 110% of everything that you are or ever have been or ever will be. You gotta put it all on the table.
Last March, I had a light bulb moment. I had an idea for a website.
Oh, yeah, I've had ideas before. Who hasn't, right? I've had ideas for books. I've started writing. I considered starting a barbecue shack. I collected recipes. (I'm practically vegetarian. This was not perhaps the most well thought out idea I've had.) I considered starting going into PR.
In each of these cases, I would start off down the trail. I would go off with the best of intentions. My closest most beloved relatives might try to suggest that I lacked follow-through. But I just couldn't make myself throw the whole pizza pie into the air. I couldn't really commit to any of those ideas. Ultimately, those ideas would fizzle.
This one didn't fizzle. This one survived through a failed working relationship and two failed attempts to hire different companies to help with the project. Finally, I settled into a working relationship that has been successful.
Well, "successful." That's a relative term, right? Do you ever watch the NBC sitcom, "Outsourced"? Yeah, it's a bit like that. A lot like that.
Except instead of characters named Pashta and Manmeet, I couldn't pronounce my site development company's name, so I simply refer to them collectively as The Pirates.
It's been an interesting ride. It's been a great project to work on. It's sucked up my life. Completely engrossed every part of my mind and all the hours of my day. Exhausted me. Did not exhaust my finances. (MOM: I am NOT broke. Do NOT send money.) And it has been challenging. But the time zone difference from the East Coast of the United States to New Delhi, India was only the start of the obstacles. (I quickly learned to sleep in small batches.) It taught me a lot about people and what might be called "India deadline time." Ha! I've also learned how far I can push someone (To be honest, most of my coworkers would say I already knew the answer to that), how to motivate and when to back up, be supportive and accept that "the best a person can do" probably truly is the best a person can do.
In short, I've had a ball. I might be minus a few strands of hair, but I've got a great website to show for it all the sleepless nights, angst and yes, frustration. I'm excited about it. I really hope you will like it, too. It actually had part of its birth here in this blog... in your comments and excitement. I'm not going to post it publicly here yet because it is still populating. (That's web-developer speak for "it's not very well-known among its target demographic" so far. It's still very early.)
But I will post all the details here when it's ready for you and I think you'll really like it.
Remember when you would get excited about my blog updates from behind the scenes at big stories? This is an entire website for that type of photographs and posts. The site launched two weeks ago. It's adding people on a daily basis with more expected in the next week or two.
So that's where I've been. It was never my dream to "own (my) own business," but a website isn't so much. It's a news website. It'll actually help other people. And it actually did require 110%.
I think that might be why I liked it. It was so challenging and demanding and engrossing. Plus involved journalism and current events. Everything I like. I think you will like it, too. I'll let you know when it's completely ready.
Btw, if any of you are on facebook, please ask and I'll direct you to the Facebook Fan page for the site. And the Twitter page. And t-shirt sales. Okay, I'm kidding about that last, but it made you think, right?
