Ten years ago, I was so concerned about housing prices in Bend that I Googled "Housing Prices" and "Bubble" and discovered that there were such things as "bubble blogs" and that there were several in Bend.
I read them for awhile, then made the joke that I was going to start my own and it would be titled "The Best Minimum Wage Job a Middle-aged Guy Ever Had" which was a joke I'd been using for years in my store when people asked "How are you doing?"
Then I went and did it.
I've never had trouble writing stuff. Hell, I restrain myself, mostly.
I wrote every day for the next nine years. EVERY day. It was only this year that I finally let a few days go by without a posting. I probably still hit 95% of the days.
The nature of the blog has changed a lot over the years. First it was about the housing bubble, then it was about my business, and finally about my writing. With each change I shed a bunch of readers and picked up a few readers.
But this was always about self-expression more than anything. I'd been keeping business journals for years before I started the blog. The journals were probably a bit more candid, or at least there was a lot more bitching and moaning (believe it or not) because they were designed to relieve my need to tell everyone about everything. (Especially Linda, who'd hear me say the same thing a thousand times with small variations.)
But talking or writing this way is how I figure things out. On the tenth reiteration, something unexpected may happen, which sets me off in a whole new line of thinking.
A little obsessive and self-analytical, for sure. (You think?)
I still enjoy this, and people have been unexpectedly kind to me.
So I figure I'll just keep going.
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2 comments:
Easily the most dedicated blogger I've ever heard of.
Blogs seem to have become almost private things. I've kept a number of them over the last 15 years (in the biz you see). Web logs started out as diaries; morphed into opinion platforms; and now seem to have drifted back to personal idea/event/opinion recording systems.
Fadebook doesn't really provide the same mechanism. Fb is more like the odds-n'ends drawer that you just keep filling with crap you gather -- imagine a /very public/ window display of your crap-drawer... (is that a champagne cork, a beach hotel match book, an old dog collar, a water stained photo of a seven year old you on a slide?)
I've occasionally wondered about collecting all my written meanderings into a totality, mainly for my children, but also as a legacy. It turns out writing software provides an income, but no lasting evidence of your existence. Every line of code I have ever written will wind up ignored, forgotten or erased as if I'd never written it. A blog might be the only evidence that I actually had thoughts and insights along the way.
"An unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates
There's a bit of that with books. I wrote three mass market fantasies nearly 40 years ago. They came out, made a small ripple in the world, a big ripple in my life, and then disappeared.
Many years later, I Google my name and it turns out those books are all over the world. I suppose that the internet presence will fade eventually, but it's interesting.
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