Don't ask me, I only work here...
I've been noodling much of late on the intersection of this blogging stuff and my r/t business life, and then up pops Andrew Barnett, in a comment to this post below, asking: "...seriously, does that say anything about your passion for what you do for a living, or has this blog come to fill another, separate need? i'm curious because it has some relevance to my own situation."
Oh man, that's a tough one.
The easy part of the answer is: yes, this blog does fill another, mostly separate need.
Thinking about it, this need is one of the many things David Weinberger has helped me to realise over the years. When I first got to know and (briefly) work with David, six or so years ago, he was always encouraging me to write more. I'd post something to a mailing list or discussion forum, or fire off one of my characteristically loquacious emails, and David would keep telling me how I should be doing more of this stuff.
Then Cluetrain happened - instantly kicking the volume (both loudness and quantity) of online discussion up several notches. I found all the conversations about "learning to speak with your own voice" really resonated for me.
At the time, I was part of a team of smart, committed, but constantly frustrated individuals fighting desperately to fix marketing (and many other aspects) of a company "...so lobotomized that they [couldn't] speak in a recognizably human voice", to borrow RageBoy's seminal phrase.
I started to write more often, slowly at first, not quite sure where it was going. Then I discovered Blogger, set this place up, and suddenly found myself experiencing this head-spinning, exhilarating catharsis.
I was writing! And publishing! And people were reading it! (OK, admittedly very, very few people – but that’s never been the point. It’s the give that counts, not the get).
David was right - I needed to write.
This blog is my pressure valve, my doodle pad and my gymnasium. I come here to blow off steam, to try stuff out, and to keep my writing muscles in trim.
This might sound daft, but when I don't write for a while, I find I grow stupider.
Seriously.
I can hear myself becoming less articulate, less engaged, and far less engaging in everyday discussions. The circuits in my brain that manage coherence rapidly atrophy without regular exercise.
So this is why I blog. And this is also why it’s not primarily, or even secondarily a vehicle for business stuff (‘stuff’! – listen to him. Now that’s articulate ;-).
Inevitably, I wind up blogging about some of what I do from time to time – but that’s mostly incidental.
It works like this:
- I write about what interests me.
- My job, of course, interests me (to a greater or lesser extent from one day to the next, depending on the usual ebb and flow of workload and career motivation).
- So every now and then I write about my job.
Or about general tech trends and news. Or business issues and developments. Or international politics. Or nob gags.
So - returning to Andrew's question (and assuming I'm reading it right) does the fact that I don't spend all my time blogging about what I do for a living reflect on my passion for my job? I don't think so.
Like Esther, like all of us, I guess - much of what I do in my daytime life would not be appropriate to blog about, for all sorts of reasons.
Indeed, most of the really interesting things I’m involved with at work fall into this category. There’s a line in my official corporate bio, for example, that describes my experience as a bullet-catcher for clients: “Paradoxically, for a PR professional, Michael’s best work is often measured by an absence of media coverage”.
"I've seen things you people would'nt believe..." ;-)
So I write about the other stuff. Lots of other stuff. Doesn’t really matter what it is, to be honest. Nor does it matter much if anyone reads it.
Blogging just feels write ;-)
