Practice In Public

(Pear tree blooms in Arden, NC. Practicing with an iPhone16 Pro.)

I have this dream

...where I create lots of stuff and share it with the world, lots of times.

Half of this dream is totally-true and half of it is kinda-true.

I actually do make lots of stuff.

I write every day, make photos, videos, and I am constantly researching and learning about something. This is how I have fun.

But I don't share much of that creation.

Instead, I suffer under the belief that "it's not ready to share" or "it's is not worth the effort to make it shareable" or "that idea is still-half baked."

Or frankly, I think "this work is not good enough."

But These Are Just Limiting Beliefs

As a coach, I know these ways of holding back are simply limiting beliefs that need to be questioned. If I do not address them direcly, I will not move forward in these areas. And that is not ok!

This is why I am starting to "Practice In Public".

More Sharing Starts Today

I just started a Digital Gardens project where I publish fragments of notes, called seedlings, which can grow into sprouts, and eventually might become evergreen content.

Who Else Does This?

Lot's of cool folks!

One fave of mine is Austin Kleon's who's got a similar saying, "Show Your Work". He has written a great little book about it.

Go find it at Show Your Work! on Goodreads

Other Tools That Can Help You Share

Most folks share their work on social media like Instagram, and Facebook, but doing that can leave you feeling like a Digital Sharecropper who doesn't really have a home.

Substack is pretty decent, and it's proving to be a good place to find an audience. It's really good at connecting users to each other, and might even avoid the creep of Enshitification since it makes money by taking a cut of your paid subscriber's fees.

An even better alternative is to post your stuff on your own web site. For my https://DavidBourne.com site I use Wordpress on a rented server space.

WordPress is well proven, it's highly functional, and I know that I can move it to any server without losing anything (I back it up, daily.)

There is an Even Better Way

I love my Wordpress site, but starting in early 2025, I've been posting my Obsidian notes (like the one you are reading now) using the Digital Garden method.

The beauty of this is the ease of updating. I make a change, click a few buttons and the post is uploaded or modified in 2 seconds.

Wordpress is not hard, but there is just enough user friction that I'm less likely to share things with it. Once I figure out how to really control the design of my DG space, I might move everything over to that system.