So here I am about to write the first of hopefully many blog posts, and I bet I am thinking what every first-time blogger probably thinks—not many people are ever going to read this post.

By the time (and if) my blog gains any traction, this post could be buried deep into the paginations of what I hope is an entertaining, thought-provoking and inspiring blog about me, my startup companies, design, life and business. The news in this first post could be so old that no one cares. It could reveal nothing about my intentions for writing. It may contain misspellings, because who cares about editing when no one is there to point out grammatical errors? It could be an embarrassing piece of work, this first post, unless I try to do something about that.

If I fail, I would not be alone. In fact, I would have some good company. There’s the zero thought-provoking, matter-of-fact overview of Technorati by Michael Arrington. How wrong Seth Godin was to say Apple Stores would soon be boring—they’re no where near as boring as his first post way back in 2002 (on shopping). Maybe I am too out of touch, but I have no idea what WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg is talking about when he mentions, “NextGen notes”. And finally, I was shocked to see that even 37signals inaugurated its blog with a post dedicating 19 words to letting us all know that there indeed is a fridge that keeps food warm.

Looking around the Web at bloggers who I respect for one reason or another (which includes the aforementioned), I see that this moment—the first post—was often a big flop. I mean who cares, right? This post is suppossed to be our sloppy little entry into the world of blogging. We’re learning to write as much as we are learning to use WordPress. Surely no one will blame us for such a huge flameout in our first attempt to publish a permanent archive of our thoughts on the Web, right?

Your first blog post can be a lot like your junior high school yearbook picture, resurrected from the attic by your wife, who wants to show everyone how “handsome” you looked. You hate the picture. It was taken before you learned how to be cool. Before that friend told you that the Jheri curl was played out. It does not represent what you have become—a smart, sharp dressing fellow who gets his hair diced up on a regular basis. You’re not that old square in the second row, third picture, right page.

But for some reason, we keep our old yearbooks, I believe, for the same reasons we keep our oldest blog posts. Good or bad, it’s history. It’s a moment in time that represents us in the world. “This was me in [insert year]”. And because it’s tucked away in the attic, or many clicks from being seen, we’re comfortable keeping it so we can go and look at it once in a while. If you throw these memories away, they’re gone. Nothing is gained by deleting your history, unless we’re talking about a shared computer in the den that you’ve accidentally used with “Private Browsing” disabled in Safari.

But what if we had a chance to know what a great yearbook picture would look like? That’s what I am hoping to do with this first post. It’s too long, but I want to make sure I can learn from what the aforementioned bloggers experienced when they sat down at this very lonely moment in time and made a mark in the blogosphere. So here goes. You’ve read nearly six hundred words for me to get to what I really wanted to say:

Hi. My name is Don Charlton and I am a Web entrepreneur, designer, developer, speaker and now blogger. I started a “kinda” cash-flow positive company in 2009 called The Resumator. I also started and failed to get another company named JoinSources off the ground. In the course of failing at one venture, and now succeeding (so far) at another, I have learned things about startups that I want to share—and I want your opinions on how I should move forward. This blog will be a very candid account of my daily activities and mental state in trying to get a SaaS startup off of a dirty, cracked and sticky floor that is this horrible economy. Everything from meetings (names redacted) to marketing strategies to pricing to design sketches—I want to share it with you and see if we can help each other grow as entrepreneurs.

That’s my first post. Hoepfully it won’t be lonely for too long, because otherwise I would have only written, “I’m tired as hell it’s late. I need to get up and pitch my company to investors at noon sharp tomorrow and I am freakin nervous. Good night.”

You’ll find out about that tomorrow.