“…the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies. If it stops paddling, it sinks.”
Why I Blog by Andrew Sullivan
I’ve been meaning to post this, but as usual I kept it saved as a draft. Then I read that quote.
You’ve read the proclamations of why “blogging is dead”, whether it’s because of social media, SEO, spam, hacks. Or because people didn’t have enough invested in it.
I was reluctant from the start. I told someone once that I didn’t like to get into blogging if I were to eventually miss updating it for long periods at a time. Andrew Sullivan nailed it.
I also tend to enjoy the act of crafting an entry more than publishing it. HTML, cut, paste, share, ponder, tweak, save draft, preview; rinse, repeat. Sometimes you write to be heard; other times you write to let things out. How many draft posts do you have?
It’s another reason art direction/magazine-style web design is exciting; a whole new layout each article changes the game:
- Jason Santa Maria
- Just Watch The Sky
- Gregory Wood
- David DeSandro
- nemoorange.com: new moon
- BrokenLogic
- Dustin Curtis
- A Brief Message
- Trent Walton
- Team Fanny Pack
- Stainless Vision
- The Bold Italic
- Dave Harper Design
- Jack Cheng
- Travis Gertz
- Free PeepCode Blog
But what. to. write. Wisdump alone sucks the life out of me twice a week. I’d much rather link-blog like Tina Roth Eisenberg, Jason Kottke, or Cory Doctorow than try to bleed out a bunch of paragraphs, which usually happens when I rant. I’m less ranty now.
- Never let small things bother you.
- Learn to say no to things you don’t want to do.
- Cut negative people out of your life.
- Cut people out of your life who only contact you when they want you to do something for them.
Complaining is silly. Act or forget.
Stefan Sagmeister
But I can also link-dump elsewhere on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr (Plurk, actually), construct a lifestream (another web construct I like), and produce content without spending so much effort on the SEO, spam, hacks.
The last two are the most frustrating; even when you let a site gather dust, it can still get hit by malware and you have to fix it. Makes me even wonder if database-less or hosted publishing systems would be more satisfying.
In any case, you know where how to stalk me.
P.S. Happy CSS Naked Day!