So it’s finally been poked, prodded and kicked into life!

Welcome, in that case, to apartment3.co.uk – a document of someone that lives in Apartment3, a small flat in the centre of Glasgow, Scotland. Perhaps, as time goes on, there’ll be thoughts from the other inhabitant of the flat. Maybe even a site, as is planned. Time shall tell.

So what is it that has kicked this flat into having an online presence in this manner?

I dunno, really.

I’ve always had something online, where I’ve written. On my blogs in the past, I’ve grumbled and grumped, soared and flown, fallen in love and been heartbroken in a second. And, even if no one reads it, I’ve always found it fun to have a record of what’s gone on in my head at any instant in time – Some are stored as interesting documents of my decisions, some I’ve cut loose and killed before I do some damage with them. The most important thing, however, is that I’ve done it, and that I’ve enjoyed it.

So I’m trying it again. Blog mk 5.(ish)

I’m not trying it in the same way, however. I’ve always quite enjoyed writing about stuff, because stuff invariably interests me, as does the process of writing. Let’s break this down, before we continue.

Below, you’ll see some grey text. In that is a brief blurb about me. These are some of my interests, more specifically the indoor ones. I figured the outdoor ones would make the list too long, but suffice to say I like being indoors as much as I like being outdoors, and I like doing things when I’m in either situation. The things I do are the things that interest me, and if I don’t enjoy it or I’m not interested in it, I’ll pretty quickly stop doing it.

If I have enjoyed it, I tend to think about it. Lots. The only way to stop thinking about it, really, is to properly analyse what I’m thinking about. Why I’m interested, what it’s making me think of, some further research to better understand it. If I don’t do that, I don’t sleep. And when I don’t sleep, I’m cranky, which isn’t pretty. So if I have somewhere to collect all my thoughts, I can do that and come back to it later. More importantly, I can sleep and my flatmate and girlfriend can rest easy, knowing that I’m not going to be grumpy in the early afternoon when I awake.

“But doing that online seems to be an odd place,” I hear you say. “It lets others into your head”.

It doesn’t really, I think. The reason I’m doing this is because I came across something called Project 52. It’s something that interested me, so I read loads about it instead of sleeping, and decided it was the thing for me. When I say loads, I don’t actually mean loads, as there’s not much to read.

From what I gather, Project 52 died a quick death, amusingly. I don’t think anyone was quite ready for what it involved, and most folks got excited and then forgot about it. There are some things to take away, however, that I will!

I think the key idea that I find attractive is that it reminds me there is more to life that 140 characters, status updates and comments. Obviously, they’re nice to get and send, but they’re not creative, are they? They don’t make me think, it feels more like a knee jerk reaction to a comment than a thought out response. It’s not a conversation, it’s just shouting at a wall.

So instead of subscribing to a website to show my allegiance or asking people to come here to ensure it’s policed properly, my plan is to output 1 piece of creative work a week here for myself and those that care. Picture, blog, video or circuit diagram for something exciting I’ve been working on – you name it. I probably won’t do it if it’s requested, but equally I might.

I also plan to read more, and probably link to what I read using my tumblr stream in the social stream link above. Blogs, articles and other things that interest me. Time is better spent learning by doing that than farting about doing nothing!

So here’s the challenge set ahead young Hibby. At least one post a week, in any form, that doesn’t contain content along the lines of “Today I went to the zoo and it was fun because there were lions and tigers and when I saw the big ostrich at the parade I was excited.” I don’t want a lifestream, I want a thoughtstream.

I want to be creative again.

And here’s where it starts.

But first, I have to get the site’s formatting right.