I like to write and I’d like to get better at it, but if you think you have to come up with something profound it’s a great excuse to procrastinate.
Twitter is quick and ok for random shower-thoughts, but not for anything meatier.
Google+ used to be a good middle ground. There were less restrictions on length so your post could have a heading, and some formatting so it looked nice. Of course, that all evaporated when Google got bored and nuked the whole platform.
I have this blog but it always felt like I should be posting longer form essays. But maybe not.
In The Memex Method Cory Doctorow treats blogging as a “commonplace book”:
… a web-log serves as more than an aide-memoire, a record that can be consulted at a later date. The very act of recording your actions and impressions is itself powerfully mnemonic…
and…
The genius of the blog was not in the note-taking, it was in the publishing. The act of making your log-file public requires a rigor that keeping personal notes does not.
This was kind of exhilarating. Of course I can just write and publish stuff. It’s public so there’s pressure not to say dumb shit, but the real value is learning by having to explain it to yourself (and others).
Who knows, it might even work for me.
