I have one encompassing New Year’s Resolution I think is worth sharing, as it will affect this blog. No, I’m not leaving the blog, I hope to write a post a day as I have for about a year now. What I do plan on doing is writing more from my heart and mind, rather than writing for the sole purpose of ‘blog worthy’ material. Don’t get me wrong, I do intend for what I write to be interesting to you, but I want to steer away from my focus on the popularity of my blog. Let me explain, cause I think a few of you can relate.
For about a year now there are a few links I’d click on daily when I sat down to write a blog post. First, I’d peak at statcounter.com or Google analytics to see what people where looking at or where they were coming from. I’d double check technorati to see if my ‘Authority’ was up or if anyone new had linked to me. If I was still procrastinating on writing I’d check out my feedburner stats. Then, I’d browse through my Google Reader for the tenth time in a day and see if there was any late breaking news story I could scoop or at least blog about first. Honestly, the whole process was both a major act of procrastination and a pathetic attempt for unnecessary attention.
I do like the dialog though, and I think it is an extremely good thing. I like when other bloggers link to things I write or post, it reminds me that I am part of a community sharing wisdom and information with one another. I enjoy the comments on the things that I write, it challenges me to think differently, to continue on my journey. Writing and dialog are a powerful thing (I know I’ve said this before). It reminds me of one of my favorite writing teachers.
My freshman year at Wheaton College I took Creative Writing with Dr. Davis. He was a great teacher and I always enjoyed his class, though I think he considered me a pretty poor writer. The way he had us write papers was great, and I think any teacher around should follow his lead. Each time we wrote a paper there was a process to it. First we would hand it in. Dr. Davis would read the paper, highlight grammar mistakes, and then he would write about a paragraph of his thoughts about the paper, our writing style, etc. Our job then was to correct the mistakes and then respond in a full paragraph to the things that he had written, which we then handed in and finally received a grade on. It was fabulous because our papers where more then just about a grade, they where a dialog, they made us think, they guided us to improvement, and they reminded us that writing was about more then just a grade.
I want this blog to be about more then just it’s Technorati Authority, Google Pagerank or Subscriber numbers, I want it to be a creative outlet for me and a dialog with you. This is how this is going to play out for me. With my recent move to a new house, my parents have graciously brought me the boxes I left in their basement. These boxes where full of old notebooks and papers from high school and college (not that long ago for me). In addition, my long reading list was poorly attended to last year, I seem to have caught a case of “Internet Induced ADD” and I need to break myself of it. So, I’m clearing out my Google Reader and cutting back on my online reading. I’ll still skim things and check out your blog posts (especially if they contain any links to me 😉 but overall I’m trying to cut back. What I’ll be writing about what necessarily be new, I’ll still be writing about money, social issues, fatherhood, etc. I’ll also be trying to share more stories, maybe posting old notes, papers, etc I’ve written, or wisdom from notebooks of classes I’ve taken. My hope would be that I can share with you some new nuggets of wisdom, rather then regurgitating thoughts I came across in my procrastinating blog reading.
