Why Am I Receiving This Email?

I am just starting to blog again, after a hiatus of several months and before that several years. In order to restart things, I chose a handful of people who know me and who I thought might be interested in seeing what I'm up to. Then, I subscribed them to my blog email list.

I hope you don't mind!

If you'd rather not receive these mailings, please feel free to hit the unsubscribe link at the end of this message and thanks for your attention and apologies for the intrusion.

If you decide to stay for the journey, welcome! I am pleased to have your company.

Milan

Intro

Hi. My Name is Milan and I'm pleased to meet you. I hope we can get to know each other better as time goes on. To get things started, let me explain a little of the motivation I have for starting this Newsletter.

Chicago

I happen to like Chicago, and all of the opportunities it offers to enjoy arts, culture, urban life and making a living. I write about a lot of those things.

Vanity

Because I have things I'd like to say, and to let people know. Blogs are a good way to do that, especially if they are "voluntary" in nature. In other words, I'm not forcing anybody to read what I write, but would be very happy if you do read it and find it worthwhile. It's a vanity effort.

Here's what I think. Now what do you say to that?

You can unsubscribe any time using the links provided. It really is a painless operation, unlike canceling your subscription to main stream media!

Experimentation

I started blogging using Google's Blogger. Gut Google's idea of a "free" service is really a form of entrapment, and besides being a really unsatisfactory interface that makes life difficult for a writer, it is also difficult to leave. Eventually, I got discouraged and decided to look for a better home.

I decided to try Ghost, the current platform you're reading this on. I liked it! For a more in-depth post on why I found Ghost better than Blogger, I have another post planned. But after I became familiar with Ghost I decided that what I really needed to do was host it myself, on my own server. That started a much longer and more difficult project that I have finally completed. I'll talk about that in another post coming up.

This process was really a long learning curve for me, and one of a great deal of experimentation. My goal was and remains to find out what works and what doesn't, and to try to hone my communications skills.

Your comments are especially helpful in this regard, especially suggestions for improvement or letting me know about things you don't like! It's all part of the learning process.

"Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward" is a quote by John C. Maxwell that encourages people to embrace failure as a part of the process of learning and growing. The idea is that by failing early and often, people can learn quickly and get closer to solving problems.

Failing Forward

With all of that being said, let's get on with the fun. I hope to see you again.

In closing, a favorite Tom Hanks quote from The Polar Express, where The Conductor informs Hero Boy:

Funny thing about trains. It doesn't matter where they're goin'. What matters is deciding to get on.

All aboard!