I’ve been having a lot of conversations about blogging lately, for whatever reason. It feels like 2005 again. And, like most people who have been blogging for a while, I’ve been through several periods in which I’ve have to reevaluate or adapt my blogging for whatever reason. Twitter catches on? Stop the two-three sentence posts referencing a single link! Information overload? Post less! Job gets more demanding? Post less! New baby, new town, new job? Post less!
But the thing is that I’ve always found that blogging is a valuable public space to work out ideas and think about things in a way that allows for participation in a larger community. I comment on others’ posts, and people comment on mine. We have a shared, larger conversation. Ideas get better. The day-job work improves. There’s more to write about… It’s a virtuous circle.
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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about quality vs. quantity. When I blog a lot less, I (personally, though I suspect this is not just something that I feel) feel the stakes are higher and the idea has to be better. If I blogged more frequently I wouldn’t be as concerned that every post be a gem, and as a result more posts would be out there, many of which would be good ideas that I would have judged too harshly before.
In this same line I think about 750words (which is a site I use and will enthusiastically recommend to anyone who is mildly interested) and National Novel Writing Month (which I successfully completed back in the pre-child days). Both projects are about just getting the words on the screen. The specifics of what the words are don’t matter so much as just getting in the practice and habit of writing. And I think it’s time I spend some time getting in that habit in the blogging world as well.
So, in the spirit of one of my new colleague’s interest in open scholarship, here’s my open attempt at jump starting a blogging practice again: a month of work-day posts. Some will be like the posts I’ve been doing for the last six months or so, some will be shorter, nuggets of ideas. Some will be about things that are interesting to me that might be interesting to someone out there. But it’s a month of blogging ahead.
Along with this, we’ve kicked off a Bloggers Guild at work this summer, where we’ll be talking about some of the intentions and meta-issues around blogging as well as taking some time every other week or so to sit down together and carve out some time to get started writing. It’s a fun group, and I’m encouraged thinking about a summer of blogging. But for now: I’m just glad to kick off a personal 20 days of blogging challenge.
Post Script: It’s really interesting to go back and look at first posts. My first library blog post described my interest in “ambient findabiltiy” and “education in a non-school setting” which I’d say is still my primary interest, though I’d frame it more as “creating more intuitive systems and teaching people to operate in today’s information environment” and “informal learning.” The more things change, the more things stay the same…