My blog currently needs a complete overhaul, mostly because I’ve only recently started to get a handle on the audience I am hoping to talk to (and I’m hoping will talk to me). Up to now, I could barely answer any of your questions because I didn’t have a coherent sense of to whom I was blogging, and therefore why. So I’d throw into the question mix:

What communities am I a part of, or aspiring to be a part of?

What is my role/position/status in those communities, and what do I want them to be?

Wow, this is a cool post. So many pointed questions about such a particular practice depending upon who you talk to about it. Blogging for me is often an impetuous act. In fact, I sometimes think I’d be better off having a little warning screen after hitting the publish button asking me, “Are you sure you want to publish this craziness?” My process for blogging is pretty consistent, however: I think of something, write it out (as stupid as it may be), search for an image or video (which are usually a must for me), and then slam the publish button indiscriminately. Soon after I return to the blog post and edit it at least three or four times after having originally published it.

I know this may be a forbidden love, but I am taken with the aesthetic of the space as much as the ideas that sometimes come out of it. Having a corner of the internet wall to graffiti upon is one of the most enjoyable parts of the process. I throw everything up there to experiment with all kinds of plugins, services, feeds, etc. to see if they work as well as if they might be useful it different contexts (particularly teaching and learning). My blog is more often than not an experimental space for all kinds of widgets, doo-dads and various other services I come across on the tubes.

I also think the ability to create an online archive of your opinions, ideas and practices that can be personalized, categorized, tagged, and easily searched is nothing short of revolutionary. But maybe best of all, it has been an unbelievable opportunity to capture some fleeting ideas I, and others via comments, have had about all kinds of things. And this is not simply for purposes of navel-gazing, but with the understanding that somethings that someone has said in this space may resonate with others. The idea of others engaged in a similar process (and all the potential cross-over that comes with this) is extremely exciting and keeps me blogging. Blogging can never be understood as an isolated practice (i.e., my external hard-drive of ideas or a personal archive) because it is not a static diary or journal, but rather a dynamic, open, and collaborative public notebook filled with half-baked, but possibly generative, ideas.

Sometimes, it’s just nice to share.

Live fast, die fast, blog fast, that’s my motto (cool sunglasses).

The posts that I get out are usually from something that I have just seen or thought about, and have to get something down about it at that moment. This means for a post to see the light of day, I need to have some time right in the moment.

While my posts might not seem like it, it generally takes me a while to put a post together - writing, changing, editing, adding pictures, adding links, rewriting, changing and finally publishing. I’m often thinking it out as I write - posting forces me think more deeply when I have to explain my thoughts in some coherent manner to someone else.

So, if I don’t finish a post in one sitting, it probably won’t see the light of day. Right now I have about 5 posts that are in drafts, and I never seem to revisit them. Why? Not sure - maybe the thought has passed and doesn’t seem as important when I come back. Or, I’m just not able to get myself to re-engage the thoughts and get myself back mentally to the place I was when I started the post.

So, most of my stuff ends up being “top of the mind.” The comments help me immensely in following up on those thoughts.