So, after one failed attempt a couple of years ago, I've finally done it... I'm writing a blog.
In the past I was held back by never feeling like I had anything interesting to say. However, I think that in reality it's the other way around - having a blog and getting used to posting regularly means that when I do come up with something insightful, it'll be easier to express myself. So I'm going to go for it and see what happens.
There are other motivations, though. Apart from being able to share my thoughts with other people, I'm hoping that blogging will improve the quality of my writing, and force me to think through arguments or ideas in a logical way. It's a good exercise in disciplined and concise writing, and I expect it will take a while to get used to the more conversational style of a blog. I'm much more used to writing in a business (i.e. PowerPoint and e-mail) context, where brevity and directness tend to win over nuanced analysis and commentary...
I suppose that I'd also like to emulate the bloggers I read myself, the number of which has exploded in the last six months, since I (very belatedly) started using Google Reader, an RSS feed aggregator. It really is absolutely brilliant, and has completely changed the way I use the Internet - I'd highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't used RSS feeds before.
However, whilst there are loads of things that have RSS feeds, like news or entertainment sites, I have admit that I'm fairly straightlaced, and the majority of my feeds are blogs. Some of my favourites are Joel on Software (though he posts much less than he used to a few years ago); Mark Cuban's Blog Maverick; Confused of Calcutta, written by my hero JP Rangaswami; Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror (I don't program, but find Jeff really interesting); the uncompromising Ryan Holiday; 'The Four Hour Work Week' author Timothy Ferris' blog; the ubiquitous Seth Godin; and then of course Steve Pavlina, all-round guru and the author of the new definitive book on self-improvement.
RSS feeds are also useful for keeping track of regular columnists, like Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column in the Guardian; Charlie Brooker; Will Self; Stephen Fry (though he's incommunicado for now); and Nicholas Carr. Then of course there's xkcd - the best comic on the Internet (and therefore the world).
The trends page on Google Reader shows me that I subscribe to 95 blogs, though this fluctuates daily. As ever the 20% probably make up 80% posts, and The Awesomer is far and away the most prolific blog I read, or rather, skim. Most are written by a single individual, so the volume isn't very high - around 60 items a day on average. This is probably somewhere in the middle in terms of RSS subscription - some people read literally thousands, or tens of thousands, of posts per day. However, I prefer to keep mine manageable, and have an aggressive policy of removing the ones I don't read, or find boring.
So... what's my blog going to be about? Good question. I don't know the answer yet, and I guess that it'll be a while before I find out. Essentially, I think blog about stuff that I find interesting, so that will probably include photography, technology, personal development, and history, with a bit of misunderstood current affairs, films and TV shows, and pop psychology thrown in. I hope it'll be interesting...
Until next time.
