Michele’s Freeminding

First of all, I’m sorry for the lack of posts, but, unlike when I was starting this blog, I decided that I don’t want to fill this website of useless posts just for the sake of it and now, I’m trying to keep the quality of each entry a little bit higher - hoping I’m achieving this…
Now, move on to the real content of this post…

In the past few days, I’ve been thinking about how to make my spare time profitable.
You know, I could endlessly redesign my websites, maybe design a couple of websites for my friends and relatives, but it’d not be very useful. Sure, I’d end up with quite a good knowledge in designing website, but not much more.
Instead, I think I should focus my mind on much more worthy projects.

With my friends over at Wonsys we have a project going on - though very sluggishly -, but I’d also like to work on my own project.
Working in a team is one thing, working alone is another one. Don’t get me wrong, both are extremely important, but sometimes, working alone can help you improve yourself somehow more: you can follow the path you choose, may it be good or bad, and you will end up with a bigger knowledge, because when you work in a group, usually, you tend to follow a path that everybody likes and everyone knows.

That’s why I decided to start my very own project. At the moment, I prefer not to tell you what it is about. I can only tell you that it is at a very early stage, indeed, I still have to choose the language I’ll use to develop it: I’m doing a lot of research to make sure that I’ll choose the language that will help me the most.
Another thing I can tell you is that I’ll try to finish everything before September - 6 months should be enough.
This project will help me explore new ways of developing software: I’ll organize myself better, always try to find the best solution to a problem - not only one that simply works - and hopefully find a way to make something out of it.

I’m convinced that the right time to start your own project - or business, if you want - is when you’re still studying.
Why? Because when you’re studying, the first thing you’re supposed to do is actually studying, so you can take risks and maybe fail in your project, but it wouldn’t be a problem, because you don’t have to make a living out of it.
To make it simpler: if you have a family to take care of, you can start your own business, but you can’t afford to fail. Instead, if you’re in college and start your own business, it’s not big deal if you fail. Well, it’s not fun to fail, but if you’ve got nothing to loose, it’s not a problem.

So I have this idea in my mind that I want to make into something real. It’s not a million-dollar-idea, but it’s something that I’m sure has somekind of market, simply because is somehow part of the market.
And I’ve also got a few other ideas flying in my head, but those are more uncertain and I have to think more about them before I seriously start to work on them or even propose them to someone else.

This post was written 3 years, 5 months ago on March 22nd, 2005 late evening.