11/02/2020

The archive contains older posts which may no longer reflect my current views.

# I'm really liking how the daily feed is working and looking, I can see why Dave Winer suggests that people read his blog in a particular way even if it's not traditionally "bloggy".

Blogs are our own homes on the web, our own spaces of refuge to do with as we see fit so why not do something a little different and stamp our own personality on them.

# Now that I'm happy things are working properly I've updated the /Subscribe page with the additional feeds.

# There's something I've noticed over the past couple of weeks, something that I need to work out.

When writing on paper, rather than on the screen, the act is separated from posting so makes me think deeper about things as there is less distraction. It makes me feel like I should be writing something meaningful every time I pick up the pen.

That's surely a good thing, right?

Using my phone to post more while I've had this issue with my eye has highlighted the different ways I think and post. I have been posting more frequent, shorter, quick-fire items rather than the more considered pieces.

I look at the "On this day" section and, for previous years, see numerous posts per day: a more conversational style, a stream of consciousness approach.

I miss that.

When I talk about "Book 2" I think that approach was one of the things I got right and is definitely something I want to get back to.

Not all the time.

The new daily feed will obviously work best when there are multiple posts written in such a fashion but I have to find the right blend, establish the correct balance that allows me to do both and not artificially limit myself.

Going offline and writing by hand is absolutely one of the best things I've done recently; it's taught me quite a bit about how I think and approach things, although I'm still only on the first steps of the journey.

If I am to truly live the "life model of blogging" 1 then I need to allow myself the freedom to post whatever, whenever, however and not get caught up on the whys and wherefores.

There aren't any rules to this game so why do I keep changing them?


  1. Yes, I linked to a full day rather than an individual post. I felt the two posts on that day set the perfect context and should be read together. 

1 comment: click to read or leave your own Comments

# I had one ear bud in while doing the dishes, only half listening to the "Your Discover Weekly" playlist on Spotify, when the below track came on and I just stopped, stood transfixed, my full attention utterly devoted:

https://youtu.be/Xju5_qfkDRU

A helpful comment on the YouTube video (yes, they do exist) advised that the lyrics to the piece were actually a poem written by Charles Wesley in the 18th century.

Ah! lovely appearance of death! No sight upon earth is so fair; Not all the gay pageants that breathe Can with a dead body compare.

In isolation the first stanza seems a bit morbid but, as you progress through the rest, it becomes apparent that this is a wonderfully, beautifully eloquent way of looking at death: as a release, as the beginning of the next.

The death itself is not the sad part, the sadness is reserved for the one left "To mourn and to suffer", longing for their own "delivery" and their "spirit created anew."

# Phil commented on "Rejoining Facebook" that "things like this aren’t always all-or-nothing."

I need to "find the right blend, establish the correct balance" that allows me to write however circumstances deem appropriate: phone or paper. It's not one or the other, it's not all-or-nothing.

The title of the missing microcast episode was, somewhat coincidentally, "All or nothing".

The universe is trying to tell me something!

3 comments: click to read or leave your own Comments