Not totally dark

I was thinking about your reservations about blogging. You know–wanting there to be an audience, or a theme, or just generally, a point. I take your meaning. I think that same notion is often enough to stop me when I think about throwing up a post about something. And yet, when I think about the blogs I like, very many of them have a bit of aimlessness about them that I thoroughly enjoy. Similarly, whereas I first got into podcasts for very specific career goals, like learning about a programming language, or productivity, or news, I've lately gravitated towards podcasts where people tend to banter with each other more than anything else.

I enjoy reading about what's on people's minds, what their day-to-day looks like, and what they care about, especially if they invested more than 280 characters in expressing whatever it is. Speaking of which, why should we hold blogs to a higher standard than social media? You could say well, at least with social media you have that built in audience, and you more-or-less know they are. But, to me, the little bit of work needed to check in on a blog is that barrier that makes it a more sane place (I'll have more to say on that post, I very much agree with your points there). Still though, I completely agree that there should be a better way to consume blogs. I think this is probably a solved problem (RSS almost gets you there, or maybe something like Instapaper or Pocket) that I've just not looked into enough, but currently I have blogs I like in an old fashioned bookmark folder that I click through now and then, and it's kind of painful.

Lastly, and this is more in line with the idea behind NaNoWriMo, I like to write, and would like to do so more often. Every time I'm on here I'm reminded both of how out of practice I am (especially given my usual Slack/Messanger/SMS communications) as well as how much I appreciate having these ideas down somewhere. I mentioned before how I appreciate the way a post makes you organize your thoughts, but I've also loved going back and seeing what we were writing about several years ago (apparently I was old back then, and you were beset by dragons one Halloween). On a strictly utilitarian note, I've also gone back to look at code snippets I put down because it only takes me a few days to forget things.