Public Notebooks and Blogging
6 March, 2019
I started blogging in the early years of this century and, for the longest time, I was a fairly prolific blogger on a range of subjects. Over two multi-year stretches, I maintained three blogs. Each updated at least twice a week.
Then, burnout crept in. No, it didn’t creep in. It hit like a flying cinder block. I was compelled to keep up the pace, even if I couldn’t. I began to doubt myself. I wondered if my ideas, which were (and are) a bit too left field, were actually having an impact.
While I had enough ideas to keep my blogs going for at least a year, I had to stop. I had no plans to start again.
That said, I missed blogging a bit. I didn’t miss the pace and expectations I’d set for myself, but I did miss the act of putting down an idea (no matter how completely formed) and setting it adrift on the seas of the internet. So, I decided to slide back into the blogging world.
The problem was that I didn’t want to blog. At least, not in the form that blogging has adopted. I didn’t want to publish long tracts, fully-formed arguments, lengthy guides. Instead, I wanted to set thoughts and ideas loose online. Nothing too long, nothing too structured. Just wonderings and woolgathering. Just snippets and speculation. Something like what I regularly jot down into a paper notebook.
And that’s how I view this space. A notebook, but one that’s not in my horrible handwriting. A notebook that gives readers a glimpse into what I’m thinking and doing. A notebook I’m under no pressure to regularly update.