I read this Dan Gillmor article recently about the old blogosphere and it resonated with me.
Before I start sounding like a World War II veteran who has had a few too many, the other thing that I liked about the blogosphere was just how personal it was. Yes, that often meant someone was up in arms or foaming at the mouth about something — often topics that perhaps didn’t justify the level of outrage being displayed (yes, I’m looking at you, Mike) — but there was still that quintessential element of blogging as defined by Winer: namely, the unedited voice of a person, for better or worse.
I keep coming back to that and thinking about it. Unedited.
I think what Dan meant by "unedited" is literally, the lack of an editor. But I have to confess over the past several years I have been editing my own voice. Severely, to the point where the voice is not just edited, it is entirely silent.
I did this for a number of reasons. For one, when I rebooted the weblog a few years ago I decided to make it more technically focused. I intended to split off the "personal" side of the weblog to somewhere else entirely. That never happened. And I think I finally came to the conclusion that it's a dumb idea: I do not want Yet Another Blogging Engine To Upgrade, and furthermore I do not want Yet Another Account On Yet Another Damn Service That Is Selling Me And My Metadata To Advertisers.
The problem with keeping the new weblog technically oriented (or trying to, at any rate) is that sometimes I don't work on technical, makery, interesting things. And then I get out of the habit of writing, so when I do start working on interesting things again, I have a hard time writing about them. I think I'd rather keep up the writing muscle and abandon the tech purity, the ideal that my life is just one awesome maker project after another. It's not. Sometimes all four of my kids get sick at once and I have to spend a week taking care of them.
Second. I have some fairly nuanced views. I do not follow a party line or ideological school of thought. Nearly everything is very much a case-by-case thing. And I do change my mind, so please note that if you are reading this from the future I may feel differently. But the problem with not fitting perfectly into an ideological slot is that I feel like I am always censoring myself. I have good friends on both sides of many ideological issues and I don't want to offend or ruffle any feathers. I'm afraid of being misinterpreted or stereotyped, by both sides. And so I find myself agreeing with my liberal friends where it is safe to do so, and agreeing with my conservative friends when it is safe to do so, like a modern day political Zelig.
Third, I was always afraid of what my employer at the time would think about some of the stuff I was working on. In retrospect, I don't even know why I worried about that.
I'm going to start writing more around here, about things that I am thinking about. There will be a wider range of topics. I may talk about politics, or even (gasp) religion. Just remember that I love all of you, my readers, and I respect you and think you are awesome. May you all live long and happy lives. If we disagree on anything, let us do so in good faith.