Chris Jarling

When I started to write things on the internet when I was 16 years old, it was mostly oddball thoughts of a late-developing teenager and pictures I took with my digital camera. I've tried several forms of writing for websites I maintained since. Of course, I had a link-blog back in the day when everyone wanted to be Gruber. I had german and english websites, in some of those I tried to write more professional and looked into journalism-inspired posts.

The domain you're reading this on now has been the one that was around the longest I think, and it never had a very clear concept. In the past few years, I had the feeling that I should publish mostly professional content on here, since the rest of this website is also rather professional as well (it even has a CV). I fail to do so consistently, both in terms of publishing frequency and content type.

Publishing professional content is work. I enjoy it when I do, but not every time I want to write something I want to put a lot of effort in. When writing professional content, I usually do some research and validation, go through multiple edits and think about where to share the content. And while I enjoy all of that, it feels more like work and less like a personal and creative outlet. The though of me somehow having to publish professional content on here hinders me of writing more.

Sometimes its just the silly things that I want to write but stop myself from doing. If you go through the post history of this, you'll see that this does not always work. Some silly things come through still. But a lot of it just dies, and that's sad.

Now, this domain is my name. I say that this is my personal website. I'm a professional for the better part of the day. But I'm also a dad and a husband and a son and a nerd and a somewhat goofy dude who, deep down, has no idea who he is. Is it fair for me to just allow this one part of me to shine through and only let the rest surface from time to time when I'm not able to push back for some reason? If I think about the websites that I enjoy reading the most, its always the ones that give me the feeling of getting to know a person behind it. The ones that cover the full aspect of a human.

I don't really know what this post is about and what my desired outcome is. I'm on vacation and its 5am. I woke up from a nightmare at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep afterwards (apparently some aspect of my personality is also a 10 year old boy still). I had been thinking about this topic for the past few days, so I decided this is the perfect time to start writing and see where I end up.

Maybe this is just about me giving myself allowance to be a person that plays several roles. To be an actual human that is not only professional and has to be conscious about being professional on the internet all the time. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's the part of me that got me started with writing on the internet surfacing again and this time I'm not telling it its stupid and silly and I don't want it around here. This time I'm embracing it, as a welcome guest, that can take place on this website, just as all other aspects of me, professional or not.