Inspiring Discovery

This isn’t a post about writing something about your boss and getting fired – this is about the addiction that can be blogging and the dysfunctional behavior that comes pursuing the wrong goals.

Why write a blog? From a professional standpoint, it exposes potential employers and/or customers to who you are, what you believe, and what drives you. I think its infinitely better than a resume to get someone’s insight into you. If this is your motivation, then the stories of your kitten and the dandelion yesterday really don’t add much value.

On the other hand, this may be an online diary – that you want everyone to read? Maybe. Its easy to write stuff on a blog, the software (I use the Performancing plug-in for Firefox) makes it easier and easier to write down some thoughts and throw them up on the web. I think for my marcshiman.com site, I’m writing to write – if anyone sees it, thats fine. For this blog, I would like to be able to point people to it if they want to know more about me.

But then comes the allure of traffic – how do I generate hits? An actual productive output of hits is valuable comments on my posts (they are intended to inspire discussion). But now I’m finding myself doing things that I wouldn’t normally do just to drive traffic there.

Why? Maybe its an ego thing. A long time ago I had a newsletter which grew pretty fast in popularity. It led to some sort of celebrity status for me (which publicly I showed distain for but privately enjoyed).

Its an evil thing though. Instead of writing to what is important, I write to what will drive traffic. Yuck.

The other thing I worry about is the work-in-progress that is up on the blog. Like this crappy post. The best way to do it is to write it… take a break… and then re-write it. The re-write is where the quality comes from. Its just so easy to hit that “publish” button on the bottom and be shut of it.

I’d like to have a place where I can do my creative work in private and post it when I’m ready. A vault of ideas. Actually, there are plenty of possibilities ranging from a notebook and index cards, to some sort of PIM, to tiddlywiki and writely online; even Performancing has a notebook feature.

My perfect Notes Vault is

1. online so I can get at it from different machines
2. allows me to upload via email
3. allows me to write wysiwyg text
4. allows me to write in outline format
5. allows me to mindmap (!)
6. Maybe works with a tablet PC???
7. Allows me to tag my notes so I can organize them
8. ummm…. any thing else?