I love categories. Compartments. Little places to stash what I’ve sorted.
When there’s something in my house and there’s nowhere to put it, it stresses me out. Similarly, when I have some kind of pursuit or offering I want to put out there, it stresses me out that I don’t have some kind of business for it. Or website. Or at least a category.
So just like the outliers that get kicked under the couch of my living room, my outlier activities and dreams get pushed out of sight, too.
But just because something might seem out of sight, it’s never out of mind. In fact, shoving it away somehow makes it bigger.
So that’s where the junk drawer comes in, right? Or the junk bin. Or closet.
All those uncategorized things that you can’t just throw away, but you just don’t know where they go yet.
That’s what Subtext Media is to me. That’s what my 5 million domain names are to me.
I’m calling Subtext Media (the domain name is ILoveSubtext.com) my “holding company”. Like the super-brand mothership queen bee of all business pursuits I may or may not have.
That way, I don’t have to get hung up on the perfect domain name or the perfect blog niche or the perfect specialization.
Because I need to face it. The reason I love categories so much is because I am the furthest thing in the world from any kind of specialization whatsoever. I don’t even know if I qualify as a “Hybrid Professional”.
So as I’m working out what the Atticlands is really going to be, I’m also starting up a website with my name at the top. Jennifer Osborn Tjornehoj.
I’m thinking (for now) that site is going to be another little junk drawer of all my precious treasures. It’s going to have categories like:
- Photography
- Drawing & Painting
- Events
- Personal Interviews
- Creative Writing
- Branding
- Teaching
I am fully aware that any blog expert or business consultant or some other person who thinks they know how to do it better than me would cringe. And they’d cry. Or they’d fall down in a heap of eye-rolling laughter.
But I need to just dump everything on the floor so I can see what I have and where it needs to go. Sure. I can agree that any one of those categories could be at least one business (or at the very least one website) in and of itself. Especially for that pesky SEO thing.
But that’s just not where I am right now.
For now, I’m just glad that Atticlands is where I get to be messy and in the process of figuring things out and kind of a little bit dealing with a mid-life crisis or mid-life reinvention or whatever you want to call it.
And jentjornehoj.com or jenosborn.com if that’s easier will be the place where I show off a little. Where I get the things I’ve made and done and thought about over the last several years and kind of just say, “Yeah. I did that.” And I can do it for you. It’s going to be kind of more polished and presentable. More buttoned up.
It all amounts to the same thing, though: Action over perfection. A lab. A workshop. With as many revisions and scrapping of the plans and doubling- downs as I want!
Why… hello, Freedom.
