Dave (NSFW) and I have conversations from time to time about what makes blogs successful, the concept/extent of the a-list, and what we do wrong as bloggers, what we’re working on to boost our blogs, and so forth. We’ve been in this world for years and years, and it’s interesting to have a colleague, as it were, to bounce ideas off of and think about these things as I attempt to build this blog and and myself as a better blogger. This follows loosely from my post on the future of tealart.
My first, and even recent, attempts at blogging on TealArt have failed because I would blather on about something that interested me, and there wouldn’t be much of a point and it was sort of impersonal, and, well, the archive is full of these entries.
More recently I think I’ve fallen into better space with blogging. I blog about what’s going on in my life on a fairly regular basis. I talk about technology, and I mention my knitting stuff when I have news or thoughts about this. When I started tychoish, my goal was to use the blog, as an electronic version of the moleskine that I carry around.
I’ve tried to organize my notebook carrying around habits in a number of ways, and predictably, I get back to a place where I just have one notebook at any given time, and I write in it as things happen. So my class notes, if I write them by hand are arranged by time, rather than by subject. And I’m pretty good at remembering things in relation to what kind of notes are around it, so the chronological aspect of the notebook was pretty helpful. And I do novel and fiction planning as well as todo lists and other sorts of stuff long hand, so it’s good stuff.
Since I’d always had a problem with digitizing my notebook, and I would like to have some sort of digital notebook. I thought, oh a blog is like the perfect way to be the personal notebook.
Turns out that this isn’t exactly the case, and I still keep the paper because I don’t think you all are as interested in my lists and incoherent ramblings, and because I haven’t found the perfect way to display my archives for personal use.
The other thing that I think has changed for me recently is that I have for the first time have this instinct to “journal,” which I don’t think I’ve had before. I’ve come to expect and need this space to think about ideas, and reflect on experiences. And I think that--at least for now is a good marker of success.
Onward and Upward!