Is it rubbish, just hidden, both or neither?
Side projects are great fun — but what if no-one ever gets to see them, is that a waste of time?
I make things.
Ideas pop into my head, and I make them, and then pop them on the internet.
Stuff like DisposableMemoryProject and The100, things like ProjectYesterday, OneDayCurious, LoveThink and Clarity*.
Most are simple experiments in ‘what might happen if…’, and a few hours of hacking around in wordpress. Some I really love and want to be successful, others, I don’t really mind — they’re for me to dabble in.
Clarity* for instance falls on the ‘probably important’ end of the spectrum, an approach to making data and privacy policies open and transparent for the average person. I believe it should be the way in which Apple, Google, Facebook, anyone who takes your data and uses it, should be radically transparent and accessible in explaining how they use that data.
LoveThink however, was a stupid idea which was never going to work, but was fuelled by my fascination of dating websites and creating serendipitous connections between people.
OneDayCurious and ProjectYesterday probably fall somewhere between stupid and important. OneDayCurious is useful, and whilst it doesn’t require an audience for it to work, it would be lovely if more people were using it, and from which, a community grew. ProjectYesterday has the potential to be something really interesting, but is a “chicken & egg” problem, without an audience, there’s no content, and without content, there’s no reason for an audience to engage.
I create these things, pop them on the internet, and then they sort of just sit there. No real traffic or momentum to speak of until something magical happens.
With DisposableMemoryProject, it got picked up by a handful of photography blogs and magazines, and it went global. It was a lovely little idea which captured the imagination of people, and rightly so.
But with ProjectYesterday and OneDayCurious — they’re small and unimportant sites without real ‘hooks’ for them to get bigger, unless I push really hard for them to be seen.
And then I wonder, what are my options here — advertising?
I don’t have budget to create a campaign on facebook or google, and don’t really think it would work anyway.
How about advertising through my network? Post on LinkedIn and Medium and Twitter and so on? I don’t really have the followers to make that successful either.
So the ideas sit on the internet, lonely and without interaction — and I start to wonder whether the ideas are actually rubbish. Not just hidden, but even if people did stumble across them, they’d still not get traction. And the self-doubt kicks in, and makes me think — why bother adding another piece of functionality or content or page or comment? Why bother with the next project idea if no-one will see it or hear it?
If a website bleeps in the middle of a forest, and no-one is around to hear it…
But then I’m reminded of Artists
My ex-business partner once said my side projects were art — which I violently disagreed with him over, never believing for a moment that my work was grand enough to be attached to a word which I have the utmost respect for. “My work is not art — it’s simply me dabbling.” I said.
Now, upon reading more around the simple definition of art as “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination”, I’m more accepting of the idea of being labelled an Artist, or at the very least grouped with those artists who create for themselves, not others. Artists who put paint on canvas which may never see the light of day. Those who paint, not because they want to sell their work, but because of the act of creation. The emotion, the catharsis and the craft of creation. The daily practise of putting pen to paper, and improving with every brush-stroke, or uncovering a new approach, a new technique, a new way of doing something — and many times not even learning something new, but just spending time doing something which creates energy inside you, rather than drains it from you.
I realise that my pointless side projects aren’t for other people, they’re for me. I absolutely love it when others join me for the journey, find some sort of value in them, take their own form of excitement or joy or emotion from them, or just find them useful to pass time — whatever that may be, and I love learning from how people interact with my projects, seeing the ways in which I’d never thought they might unfold or evolve, and most of my side projects are fuelled by other people in some way — but the act of sketching (which is how i see my digital projects, as rough sketches of something which could be one day much more colourful and drawn properly) is for me, to help me figure out the things in my head, to get ideas on to paper and to formulate something, for the express purpose of making it real, rather than an itch in my brain.
>>> You can find a selection of my pointless creative endeavours over at http://thinkplaymake.co/
