One year ago, after some prodding from Seth Godin, I started a “daily” blog. Ultimately I wrote about four days out of seven, making up the missing day with various binges of multiple posts.
After a month, I decided to reassess every solar event, and upon one full trip around the sun, at the autumnal equinox, I decided to call off the experiment.
It has been an enjoyable run, a nice written record of my first year as a public architect, and of the first year of life with the boy. However, continuing this blog just isn’t worth the effort entails.
With two little kids, the biggest issue is a lack of time. As have been noted multiple times, I have a habit of waking up early, and this is the only alone time I have outside of the office.
This blog is a good use of such time, far better than my usual demon of surfing the web, but I have become increasingly aware of how little exercise I do.
Over the past year, I’ve learnt that I only get one priority every morning, and with a regular blog it means I sit down in front of the computer as the first and often only thing. That just isn’t physically sustainable since I am not getting my exercise in later in the day.
Before I sign off of regular blogging, I pulled up an old post I wrote two weeks into the experiment but never published. It still encapsulates what I hope to get out of the exercise, but sadly, I don’t think the potential gains were realized. My writing has improved slightly (albeit at a much slower rate for than at the start), but I’m still always fighting the demon of Facebook and I’m not sure I’m getting any better at thinking than before. I have some nice slice of life observations which is nice to have on record on my own platform, but I never really got around to doing much with web publishing.
Now that it has been a couple weeks into my newfound hobby, I thought I’d do a quick assessment on the few things I think I’m getting out of messing around with this blog for an hour every morning.
The most obvious thing is that I am getting better at writing. I guess that should be obvious, especially I am at the start of the cheap and easy steep part of the learning curve, but the payoff of this increase is not to be seen on this blog. It is found in my work emails. I find myself typing up those memos faster and editing them better. Unlike these blog posts, where I’ve been saving a draft and then polishing and posting the second day, these things have to be written and sent at a moment’s notice. And the leisurely practice here is definitely helping in those pressure moments there.
To make time for blogging, I have indeed drastically cut down on my Facebook time. The main way I’ve accomplished this is by very rarely actually typing anything on that website. Aside from being the product on that platform (each of my keystroke is ends up in for Zuck’s bank account), I’ve become disappointed in how few deep conversations really get started on that platform. When I type out something deep, I usually find that I waste a ton of time refreshing the FB page and in the hopes getting the rare thoughtful response back. It just isn’t a good ROI on my time. Furthermore given how ephemeral and unsearchable any single comment is in that universe, I am convinced that it is much better to just spit in the wind by myself to my self here instead.
The main goal of why I started the blog is to think better. And I believe that is also happening. Partly because I have gotten off of the worst of the FB hamster wheel, but also because I’m now having to publish every day, I now have more brain space to just ponder. This blog is currently unfocused, and I suspect it will stay this way for a while, but having to produce (even for my current audience of one) does sharpen the mind for the task at hand.
And finally, I get to poke under the hood of how the internet works. I just signed up with mailchimp and added a facebook page. I’m not sure if I’ll do any real campaigns, but it is interesting to experience “social” from the other side of the looking glass.
I had tried to do a regular blog six years ago with a focus on the industry. As such I felt pressure to produce at a respectable level of quality, which resulted in the attempt fizzling out in a month or so. Now with this government gig, I essentially have tenure as long as I don’t screw things up. So we’ll see if this run can last as long as that previous month long run, but so far so good, two weeks in and I still enjoy waking up every morning and typing away.
I won’t lie, if a following had developed over the past year, maybe I would have kept it up longer. Everyone has an ego, and I’m a sucker for an audience, but it never materialized and most likely its for the better. One of the recurring themes from this past year is that life is a series of tradeoffs and along with physical exercise there is a good amount of bookkeeping that I have been neglecting.
So here’s to healthier habits and getting organized, and I’ll be around only occasionally.