On My Way…

I thought my first blog would be about how to use tableau. It’s the tableau community that has inspired and encouraged me to blog. But instead, at least in this moment, I feel most compelled to write about why I am blogging.

My senior year of high school I attended a leadership retreat. For one of the activities we were all given t-shirts with the words “I am” on it, and we were prompted to fill in the blank. If memory serves me right the most popular response was “Iron Man”. Why didn’t I think of that? I wrote “earnest”. A word that means, showing sincere and intense conviction. Almost no one knew the definition at the time but if they did I think they would have agreed. I’d like to think that hasn’t changed much.

Fast forward eight years to 2020 and that dedication was directed towards getting better at Tableau. And after finding the #datafam, at least part of that trajectory was to hopefully be noticed for it too. It was a bumpy start. It wasn’t going well, and it didn’t feel right. I took a long hard look at what I was doing and realized I was not being honest to myself; my conviction was strong but my approach wasn’t sincere. I was trying to fit into a mold occupied by other people in the community, ones I admired. But it wasn’t satisfying or sustainable.

After that humbling realization I decided to make my own space, do things that interested me, learn as best as I could, and be open to new experiences. It wasn’t long until things were headed upstream. If you take anything from this blog I hope it’s that you learn a lot more by trying to be a better version of yourself than you do by trying to be another version of someone else.

So what does that have to do with this blog. The primary excuse keeping me from starting one was the thought that I didn’t have anything unique to say. And while I was trying to contort into the shape of other people that was definitely true. But I’m on a journey of authenticity, and with that comes a perspective all my own, which I hope to write about here, earnestly.

So welcome to the blog. It will have a lot of components. Data, probably, primarily. But there are other parts of my life and interests I would like to share with you as well. Enjoy!