I typically fall into the ‘9’ under the 90/9/1 rule. That is, 1% create content, 9% add to, share or comment upon said content, and 90% consume the content. Mostly I’m part of the 9%, but I do have times where I jump up into that 1%.

I’ve been sharing my thoughts and opinions online since 1997, through USENET and forums, blog posts and comments, tweets,  status updates and various social gestures. But my first real addition of content came way back in 2001 with a tripod site from which I used to post illustrations and short comics. But when tripod folded their Canadian domains, I got the shove I needed to carve out my own little slice of the Internet and The Elusive Fish became a dot com.

June of 2003 was the first blog post to my own domain. That post detailed the lead-up to the site’s launch; the hard drive crash that ate several months of illustrations, stories and site designs. At the time my site was very much a hub for sharing my art and the occasional rant in essay format.  The majority of my blogging was reviews of other’s works, personal musings and discussion of my craft.

By 2005 I had taught myself the basics of PHP and the site made it’s first major shift; from a hub for my stories and illustrations to a promotion of my creative services. I’d been moonlighting as a web designer and work was picking up. There was a definite shift from personal musings to business punditry in my blogging.  In 2006 I shifted from my Blogger template to WordPress and made what would be the last public overhaul of the design.

The blog template was designed so that I could incorporate a sketch into each post. The idea was to keep me active in my illustration work at a time when most of my energies were being devoted to coding websites and toiling in the PowerPoint mines. Unfortunately the need to have an illustration with each post ended up acting as a mental roadblock. When I didn’t feel I had a clever idea for an illustration or the energy to throw another couple of hours drawing something, I would skip posting anything.

2009 I had begun the process of converting my entire site to a custom-built wordpress template. I’d started a repository of ever-green illustrations so that the blog could still serve as that impetous to illustrate but not serve as a block if I fail to put pen to paper. But then it was all pushed to the back burner, and then pretty much shelved as personal issues overwhelmed my hours outside of work.

I made a number of attempts over the years to pull it together but rarely had more than enough time to review the code I’d put together before some new event distracted me from creating anything new.

I finally realized that the site had become an exercise in shaving the yak. I couldn’t blog until I finished the template and I couldn’t finish the template until I patched and updated what had changed in the intervening months and I couldn’t do that until, and then not that until, until until until. Always something standing in the way.

I was still commenting, updating and kibitzing on various social networks, but I had ceased to be a creator and had become just a talkative member of the audience. The only thing to be done was a fresh start.

I’ve wiped all previous code and files clean and I’m starting from a fresh, blank canvas. A fresh install of WordPress 3.5 and the barebones twentytwelve theme. I’m launching myself into the air with a mess load of parts and will build the plane mid-flight. So this site will be nothing to look at for the time being, but there will be content. And over time I will cobble together the theme and add in bells and whistles. But for now you’re getting words. Thoughts. Ideas. Concepts.

This is my website. I made it mostly on my own. It is small, and broken, but still good.

Yeah. Still good.