Slowly finding motivation — it involves setting goals. Fame and fortune are boring; I can’t wake up for “growth.” I tried in 2019-20 and it didn’t make me happy. Now I get out of bed and joke with my friends. I spend a whole afternoon setting up an online forum for my offline photography group. I say I’ll shoot a one-night art event for free this week. I log into my business inbox and I sigh, even as I email real-live people; so separated by the gaping void between us — business serves customer, customer pays business.

So I set a goal. Make my open source software more widely known and used. Do it for the next 10 years and see what happens. Don’t change it that much in that time, just make it better at that one thing it does, and see what happens. Keep the traditions of the old and open web. Don’t really shout about it, just calmly tell those who wander by and wonder. Hang with the curious ones that like to give in return.

I don’t know the total addressable market of my business. There’s no market share percentage to aim for. I don’t need to make the #1 best blogging newsletter publishing platform on the internet. I just want some more people to see it, and for them to tell others about it ‘cause they like it. Maybe someone will throw some money at me along the way. That will do the trick. That’s it, that’s the goal.

#business #motivation

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My thinking lately has started drifting to businesses outside of my own.

Thinking about a "main street" for the web.

— Matt Baer (@ilikebeans) August 13, 2021

This “main street” idea is particularly interesting to me, because I think it’s the start of a path that can actually lead to meaningful resistance against the tech-giant-dominated web we live on.

I still dream of the early web days, with less rampant commercialism and more free-flowing humanity and knowledge. That side of the web is still alive and well, and will always be around. But it feels pushed to the fringes, and left out of all the mainstream conversations on today’s privacy violations, “misinformation,” and social ailments caused by the “big web.” I think it’s all pretty ironic when this old, human web holds solutions to all these problems. The answer is right in front of our faces, yet we blindly look past it.

I’m not sure what this all looks like in practice. Somewhere in it, maybe, there are organizations providing funding for small businesses that need it. Perhaps there’s a curated, social marketplace only for small businesses, where everyone in it can get to know each other. Or a federated network of these independent bazaars, naturally powered by communal, open source software. Just thoughts for now.

#web #business #mainStreet

Thoughts? Discuss...