Yep . . . count ’em.
It has been ten years since I jumped onto the internet with both feet, not to mention heart and soul.
I had been using the internet since there was one, of course, but that is not the same as being a part of it – being a “content producer” as they say.
So, way back then, with my Sheer Heaven under my virtual arm, I launched Cre8it.com
I followed barely discernible trails and blazed new ones. I did a lot of things before their time, like internet publishing under very tight constraints of file size and format. I sought to share my love of the computer as art tool when many artists were nowhere near convinced that was the way to go.
Unlike many other things, it does not seem like only yesterday that this all happened. I have vivid memories of every step taken along the “information highway”. Mile markers fly by, but you have to pay attention every bit of the way, because they constantly change the signs and the lane dividers.
And the constant change is good – invigorating, exhilarating, never boring, always challenging.
So, now I look at the next decade and see everything blossoming anew – in directions that would have been incomprehensible to most folks ten years ago. We are storing our stuff in clouds and making our art directly on tablets that are alive with magic – we are talking to our phones as well as on them. Borders bookstores are gone and the dead-tree-style book is in dire jeopardy for its economic future.
I read an interesting article about successful small business owners, and what makes them successful. I read it in a digital magazine that refreshes itself every time I open it – to become more and more about my personal interests according to the articles I read and like. Unbelievable.
Anyway, the major attribute of success, according to this article, is the ability to be flexible and adapt to the ever changing nature of your environment. I think, beyond business owners, that is the attribute all of us need – to survive our cataclysmic transformation out of the industrial age economy that has kept us safely in the middle class for most of our lives. There is no going back, and there is no staying put. No hiding places either. Just one direction to move and that is forward.
I am used to it, luckily. I have done nothing but adapt to change my whole life. I never worked for anybody except for a very few years in my 20’s, so I never felt safe in the old, settled system of things anyway.
I am also lucky to know what I love in life. That is a big help in finding the trails to follow – or where I should blaze new ones.
So, I am now re-imagining what I want to be doing for the next ten years (and more). And I will be sharing all that with you as I figure it out. As it figures itself out, I should say. There are some things I am *very* excited about and I hope you will be too. Stay tuned.
I wonder what you – my students, my customers, my readers, my friends, would like to see me do? Any ideas will be entertained – and entertaining. Except if you would like me to go away and shut-up, of course. That one is not likely to happen.
Meanwhile, I must share this video since it says so much about fundamental change in our lives these days.
This one year old toddler cannot figure out why a magazine does not work like an iPad. Probably not the best parenting, but interesting none-the-less.
18 thoughts on “Happy Birthday, Cre8it!”