Blogging about blogging is pretty meta. But. It’s what I do. It helps me chart how my approach to this little corner of the internet has changed over time.
I’ve reinvented what I do on this blog a few times now. It started out as something like a year ’round Christmas letter for my friends when I moved to Townsville. It became a rapidly rotating series of oddities and curiosities. It morphed into a space where I could think out loud about stuff during college. And now, it’s essentially a home for long form verbal processing stuff that interests me, but probably bores (almost) everyone else.
All of these things have their place.
This year I’ve posted less than in any other year since I began — I’ve started full time work, I now have two kids, and a puppy, and plenty of other stuff to distract me, but the biggest contributor to the lack of activity has been this slightly different editorial strategy. And I’m a bit bored with just writing long stuff (as much as I love writing, and reading, longer, more nuanced, pieces).
A few years back I hypothesised that there are 5 types of blogger, then, I read a post from Challies yesterday that suggests there are two.
One thing I’ve missed in the current scheme of things is linking to other people’s stuff. I found the quote below, from Challies, pretty challenging — it’s not exactly the rationale behind the switch in editorial approach. There are heaps of other factors. But I do want to love Jesus and love other people with every platform I have, and one way I can do this is point to them, and point others to good stuff. Plus. One of the functions I’ve appreciated about past versions of the blog is the way it functions as something like an electronic filing cabinet. I’m looking forward to rediscovering that feature. One of the reasons to revert to this approach is that my own browsing habits haven’t changed. My opened tabs habitually look something like this, and my bookmarks runneth over.
When I first began blogging, I was committed almost entirely to content creation. I was interested in exploring new ideas, reading new books, and discussing current events, and I found unexpected joy in doing it out loud and in public through the Internet. At that time I was (sinfully) opposed to curating content and linking to other people’s material. Somehow Envy had shown up and convinced me that if I did that, I would diminish my own readership. The best thing, and the safest thing, he told me, was to pretend that my site was the only one out there worth reading. It was both stupid and prideful. It’s rather embarrassing in retrospect.
One day I became spiritually convinced that I was sinning. God had given me a platform and it was only fair and good that I use the platform to highlight others who were creating excellent articles. As often as not, these articles were far better than anything I was writing at the time. I understood that I could be a bigger blessing to those who read my site by pointing them elsewhere. Discovering that sin, and dealing with it, brought a certain freedom to my life and to the way I wrote. I was free to celebrate the brilliance and the success of others, and free to share it with those who visited my blog. — Challies