For the past few months, I've been slowly rebranding the Ungated website as The Forest. My goal is for this place to feel less like a marketing blog, and more like a mysterious, non-linear, magical world. I want it to feel alive.
There's a new theme, new artwork, new logos, new everything. There's a lot of new writing coming, too. But until a few days ago, the plan was for all of this new stuff to stay on the old ungated.media domain. I'd mostly given up on finding a forest-related domain that didn't cost many thousands of dollars.
Then, while procrasti-scrolling through twitter, I stumbled across the following quote:
Inspired by the quote, I typed forest.quest into the search bar on a whim. Boom. The domain was not only available, but affordable, which felt like a sign from the internet gods. I purchased it, and made the official switch a few days ago.
The Forest is ostensibly about the pursuit of 1,000 true fans. At the surface level, it's a collection of writing about online business, marketing, and creativity. But beneath the surface, The Forest is about becoming more fully yourself. It's about excavating and honoring what brings you alive and makes you human, then using the internet to find the others. It's about using business as a vehicle for deeper connection with yourself and the world around you.
In other words, The Forest is a quest.
My writing can't (and won't) give you answers about what your business should be. These writings are merely the artifacts I leave behind as I walk my own path, and live my own quest. But if I do my job well, my hope is that what you encounter here will inspire something in you, and invite you into a quest of your own.
So yeah, welcome to The Forest, now complete with a spiffy new domain that reflects the underlying nature of why this place exists. It's quest time, friends.