I’m posting this here because someone saw my post about it on Twitter, and wondered why there wasn’t more about it here on the blog.
So I thought I was ready to stop blogging at Weblogsky. I mentioned it on Google+, and that was cross-posted on Twitter. I had some discussion about it on both platforms. After that, with more thought, I made this response at Google+:
…I realize there’s another approach that makes sense – dismissing the sense of obligation to keep the blog “alive,” but to continue to use it as a place to post some original writing and thinking. When I created the blog I was riffing with some friends of mine who have a group blog (http://boingboing.net), and following a curation model somewhat influenced by Whole Earth Catalog’s approach (write a short review with one or more excerpts). Much of my own thinking hasn’t seen the light of the day, except through inference, partly because I keep thinking I’ll write a book and/or some shorter pieces and do that for money. That hasn’t really happened, I’ve found other ways to put bread on the table and have some internal doubts and conflicts (as I’ve grown older, I’ve been less convinced that my thinking is marketable, though I’ve seen others buld careers on similar thinking – but the marketability of ideas is often only clear in retrospect). I should add that I’m mentally lazy – capturing and taming ideas and presenting them in a compelling way is a lotta work.
But I have friends who’ve known me for a while and say they wonder why I’m not doing more with my quirky little brain…
I said I’m lazy, but actually I’ve been burning it at both ends for a while, and I’m always prone to think I’m not doing enough. One thing not mentioned in that response – I hate to think of this as a “vanity project.” I want readers to feel that my posts here have value for them.
Right now I’m thinking I should work at having more discipline and spend more time capturing my thinking, here and possibly in a book, as well as in the various forms of social media I’m using. So maybe the blog stays, but with fewer posts that are more carefully conceived and written, taking more time for each.
