What Are You Curious About?

So. Blog Rebranding #3.

I’ve been looking for some sort of direction, a unifying theme, a purpose for this web log for a while now.

First attempt: October last year. I wrote the DIY Writer’s Manifesto and changed the site’s name to match. Looking back now, I was very cussed when I wrote that post and pt it up. I wasn’t interested or eager, I was frustrated and pissed off.

I was stressing.

Second attempt: March this year. I didn’t make as much of a big deal when I changed the name of the blog to Step One: Make Fun!, but I did write a big spiel on the About page. It was all positive and new and shiny, though. I was so happy to have a non-grouchy purpose and hyped about the possibilities that I didn’t take a breath and consider whether it was really me that I was putting up.

I was too busy being keen.

This time, though, after reading a great guest post over on Cordelia Calls It Quits by a writer who got jack of trying to turn her web log into work, I figured I’d reclaim my web log for me.

I’m tired of second guessing whether something I want to share with you folks will fit with the site’s direction, whether it will serve you, become something I can turn into a PDF and offer to people who subscribe to the mailing list.

But I’m also – slowly, but surely – growing out of thinking that life is about being stressed or keen.

I’m curious.

So how does it feel to be curious?

For me, it’s a fairly new sensation, being interested in finding out more about something without being overwhelmed with squee or feeling like my security and future depend on changing something in my life yesterday!

It’s the good feeling of finding out about something for finding out’s sake, the trust that while I have no idea what the destination will be (unlike when I’m keen, where the destination is Fun!!!!!, or stressed, when the destination eliminates the source of stress from my life), both it and the journey will be worthwhile. That I’ll learn something.

That I’ll be better.

What am I curious about?

Some of the stuff you are, I hope.

Either way, I’m developing some posts about where my curiosity is taking me – and expecting that it’s going to take me out of the places I usually frequent when I’m stressed or keen.

Still, I’ll be be feeling those again sometime, and I’d like to share the things I find out in those moods too. Maybe they’ll help you when you’re stressed or keen, too!

Here’s an incomplete selection of the things that I’m with at the moment.

• Curious:
  • How do I get a character-driven game out of Deathwatch?
  • How do I run an on-the-fly game using Roll20?
  • How do I serialize The Second War of the Worlds?
  • How do I write a novel?
  • Why did Blue Sky Brewery close?
  • How do I play the guitar?
  • How do I cook a shrimp etouffe?
  • What kind of local holiday can Vickie and I take?
  • Who else can I interview for the Paid to Play Podcast?
• Keen:
  • How do I get my mitts on a copy of Android: Netrunner?
  • How do I get involved with the Cairns Boardgaming gang?
• Stressing:
  • How do I train our dog Sookie (and myself)?
  • How do I use a Kindle to boost my reading?
  • How do I decrease my tendency to worry?
  • How do I get a decent result when editing a podcast?
  • How can I build my shoulders out?

Will they become posts?

I’m curious to find out.

Are you?

Images sourced from MorgueFile. Artists: puravida and gracey.