5 Reasons to Get Back to Blogging
10 Mar 2008
To those of you out there still checking in here, much appreciated. Much surprised, too. It's been a while since I've found the time to post anything which is, I suppose, a sign that things are going well within the scope of this whole new careerscape. Work and business opportunities have been trickling in, and I've had a chance to meet with many people (probably some of you) to discuss some exciting and potentially very interesting projects. So even though I don't feel all that brokenhearted that I've not posted in an unforgivably long time, I still have a little bit of a lingering unpleasant feeling from knowing that I have an orphaned blog out there somewhere. He has my name, but still I've abandoned him, and the longer I avoid him, the more embarrassed and less motivated I am to try to reconcile with him. Damn you, Guilt, why must you torment me so?!
Sorry, I had a little bit of a Charleton Heston moment there.
The point is that, at least intellectually, I think that blogging is a capital-G, capital-T Good Thing® and doubly so for someone who finds himself in shoes like mine. (But not my actual shoes because, let's face it, the width is going to cause problems for you even if you can get used to the odor.) It doesn't matter who you are, if you're trying to keep up a blog or any other habit, the inspiration dip is going to hit you too, and when it does, all the good intentions in the world aren't going to do a thing for you. The difference between taking a couple of days away and having that thing perpetually stuck near the bottom of your to-do list is just a matter of knowing why you're doing it. So with that in mind, I give you a few of my own reasons why I'm coming back to my blog.
- Blogging is good for business. You're about to say, "Well, duh!" but since I started writing this blog, I've heard from a lot of old friends, former co-workers, and past business contacts, and some of those conversations and e-mails have generated projects and leads. I don't want you to feel that I'm underestimating your intelligence by stating the obvious here. Rather, I'm stating the obvious so that the obvious doesn't become conspicuous by its absence and, thus, cast suspicion on the entire post. Blogging is good for business just like giving lectures or writing a book or anything else that builds your public reputation, but if that's your complete list of reasons for writing a blog, you probably won't stick with it for very long.
- Blogging keeps your writing skills sharp. I've always been a decent writer, and I've found one thing to be true: good, coherent writing is indicative of a broader tendency toward clear, effective thinking. If someone is able to sit in a chair, think deeply about a given concept, decide what words and sentences are essential to describing that concept, and write it all down in a way that communicates to most other people, that's a person who can do just about any kind of knowledge work you can throw at him. The guys from 37signals have this to say in their book Getting Real: "If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more." I couldn't have said it any better myself.
- Blogging lets you clarify your thoughts on a subject. Some people pay a therapist, others get a blog, I guess. While it's pretty unlikely that I would use this as a space for discussing confusion from my childhood or fishing for amateur interpretations of the dream I had last night, I think it can be pretty helpful as a means -- first, through the act of writing, and then, through feedback and revision -- for clarifying what I think and feel about certain subjects (within the scope of this blog's subject matter).
- Blogging gives you a voice. When Sun announced that they were buying MySQL a couple of months back, I wrote a little bit about it a couple of days after the fact. I remember feeling good writing that entry because here was this far-away, far-out deal that I had nothing to do with, but by virtue of having an internet connection and an opinion, I could say something about it and join the army of confused people who care about one or both companies, people who rely on their products to make a living, people who couldn't stand to see another screw-up like the one they really hoped they weren't just witnessing. Moral to the story: you don't need to be an A-lister to have your say.
- Blogging allows you to give away useful knowledge. Internet culture is very much a gifting culture. People open their free web browsers and expect to be able to access services without payment or restriction: news, reference information, applications, and so on and so on. The open source community is even more about giving away your best work in exchange for fame and status, at least within that small segment of the population who cares. I always got the biggest thrill out of programming from knowing that someone out in the world somewhere might be using some code that I'd written. They probably didn't even know my name, but they were getting some measure of value from the work I'd produced. A blog is just another vehicle for that same impulse except that it's not as tightly constrained by syntax and structure as a programming language would be.