The road we take through life is not straight and it is by no means easy. Every choice we make is made, I hope, with intention. An intention to do more, better, faster.

I’ve spent most of my life searching for an outlet to focus my creativity. Ever since a young age I’ve had this attraction towards creating content. From creating posts on a LiveJournal to building my first WordPress blog. I’m no stranger to content creation.

My most successful attempt (which was still a failure) was the photography community I built between 2010 and 2015. This community, fueled by a freelance writing gig for digital-photography-school.com, grew to something I was too young to realize. The community itself had dozens of daily active members, multiple paying monthly for premium features. And it died. Because I killed it.

I failed to manage it as it grew. The growth had me trying to do too many things at once. Reacting to the growing community’s needs and wants caused a loss of focus to why the community was successful to begin with. Ultimately, I spread myself thin and the result was, for lack of a better term, burnout.

Out of frustration, and possibly a bit of self-doubt, I killed the community to focus on myself (or distract myself with other things). Could it have succeeded? Was I at the cusp of success? Was I too naïve to see it? While those questions haunt me I know that in that moment it was the right choice to kill the project. I was at the end of my rope and needed the closure.

Plus, I can’t focus on regret. I can only learn from these past mistakes and build again for the future.

So here I am, 10 years older, with the experience of failure behind me. Another attempt to find the creative outlet I so desire. Another shot at creating space on the internet that provides value to strangers. Another experiment. Will you join me?