This means that I am not likely to keep up a daily blog schedule, but when I do blog, the posts should have more depth and value to them. Unfortunately, I do not always have something of value to say.   Even for very broad definitions of “valuable.” 

It’s entirely possible that the lack of sunlight is responsible for my lack of anything to say.  Winter cannot be over soon enough.

So… what are some things I could blog about that have value for you? 

Let me take you way, way back to 2007. You could still buy and sell a house for exorbitant prices, and there were still banks that would give you loans for that.  You probably actually had a job, you know, working for some company that employed real live people, instead of spending all your time launching small businesses or polishing your resume and carpet-bombing employers with it.  Twitter was around, but only Left Coast liberal elitists used it.  Not us normal, real, working Americans! Not bloggers.  We thought “what in the world would I say in only 140 characters?  Give me my Blogger/WordPress/Movable Type/Other!”

Maybe that was just me?

Times changed fast, didn’t they? I picked up Twitter, became a heavy user, and then  2010 became the year that my blog died.  I’m blaming Twitter, whether it’s honestly responsible or not.  I have made over 11,000 tweets, but the quality of my blog posts is generally higher than my tweets.  Overwhelmingly, my blog has provided more value to my readers than Twitter has.  But Twitter is like information crack.  Need another hit?  Oh look, another 400 updates to your stream.  And writing a tweet takes 1/100th the effort of penning a blog post.

It wasn’t long after I signed up that I found myself doing nothing but Twitter and ignoring my beautiful, inspiring, educational, and—above all else—humble blog.  Instead of writing posts that connected resources together and shared them in a meaningful context, I tweeted links, sometimes without any context.  Talk about instant gratification though. People retweet a hell of a lot more than they comment on blogs.  You can watch in real time as something funny or clever spreads virally from your friends out into groups of people you never even heard of with vaguely disturbing personal profile photos. You really get the sense that people are listening on Twitter.  It’s harder to know when people are reading your blog unless they are commenting on it or retweeting your announcement of the post.  Nothing satisfies the need for attention quite like retweets.  They’re dead easy to do, but empty of real conversation generally.  They’re a medium, not a message.

It’s not just what Twitter has done to my sharing habits that disturbs me.  It’s the way my thoughts themselves have changed.  For a while now, I’ve felt my thoughts turning much more shallow, and I can probably only blame that partially on my heavy use of Twitter.  But it doesn’t take generating real, actual content on Twitter to get that little dopamine buzz of attention.  You can just share a link from your Google Reader.  Or retweet someone else.  I didn’t just become a consumer of information—I became a lazy syndicator, with the false feeling that I was generating content when all I have really been doing is shifting around someone else’s content (coincidentally, this also describes a bunch of internet news sites that will remain unnamed here).

I’m not going to beat myself up about it.  At the same time I was spending more time on Twitter and less time on my blog, I was launching my web design company Clockpunk Studios.  And Twitter has some very large positives associated with it.  It has been invaluable in making business contacts.  I’ve gotten more than one client from a Twitter recommendation.

So look, Twitter’s not all bad.  It’s not all good.  It’s just a new thing that I need to balance along with all the other things.  Maybe you’re struggling with that too?  Let’s talk about this. Has Twitter killed your blog too?  Head to the comments! And keep it civil. If you just want to make fun of people who use Twitter, find some place else to do it.  Like your own Twitter account!

I’ve sworn to myself—because I apparently enjoy making ridiculous oaths to myself—that I would relaunch my blog before the year is out.  The new design is only half done.  You’ll notice an absolutely lack of sidebars.  But we’re gonna focus on content for a while here, and let those other features fill in with time.

I’m starting with this post (which I am writing 5 days ahead of publication, as a part of a general effort to a: spend more time on blog posts, and b: get the content log rolling ahead of me to build momentum).  I’ve worked up a tentative weekly schedule, which will certainly change once I’ve gotten into it a bit and begin to understand what is working and what isn’t.  When I blogged regularly, I kept a 3 day a week schedule, but that would be too easy to slip out of now after being so out of habit.  Regular, daily content generation is the only thing that’s going to build up my blogging muscles again.  So here it is:

My New Improved Blogging Schedule!

Monday:  Personal Anecdotes

This is the day you won’t want to miss if you’re really super interested in the day to day of my life as a small business owner, aspiring midlist writer, and sometimes photographer.  I’ll be digging into my past in these posts with a general goal of trying to understand how I became who I am today and how that impacts who I want to become.  Of course, it will all be written in my trademark humorous style.  You will laugh, you will cry, and you will wonder why you became friends with such a blatant narcissist.

Tuesday: Inspiration

This is where I’ll share the inspirational bits of things I’ve collected over the previous week.  This will include snippets of cool web design, awesome quotes in writing, cool comic book panels, and so on.  Stuff that inspires me to be a better artist, photographer, writer, and human being.  And not only will I share them—I’ll talk about why they inspire me.  The goal here is to get beyond surface level thoughts and back into that critical thinking mode that got me through liberal arts college with a solid B– average.

Wednesday: Tutorials!

I do a lot of stuff.  Sometimes, other people want to know how to do that stuff too.  I’ll be writing up various creative tutorials for Wednesdays.  This will run the usual gamut of topics, but expect a lot of website related stuff.  Your feedback will guide the direction of these posts, so if there’s something in particular you want to know about, then speak up.  As a comment or on Twitter.  Either way.

Thursday: The Week in Links

I have to give myself at least one easy day!  I’ll run down a list of links of interest that you might enjoy that I’ve gathered up from various resources throughout the week.  I’ll even go a step further than the old Delicious.com auto posts and actually provide some context to the links!  And they won’t be posted daily, so you’ll probably have seen and read every single one already, but hey, who knows…

Friday:  Lesson Learned

Finally, I’ll look back on the week and talk about a lesson I’ve learned, with a particular emphasis on my self-employed lifestyle and running my business.   But I reserve the right to make it lessons I’ve learned in just about everything.

So that’s that.  For now.

It takes remarkable ego to write a blog at all.  My ego’s going to have to grow a little bit to manage 5 days a week of hopefully scintillating content.  But with a little fertilizing in the form of feedback from my friends and complete strangers who clicked through from a Google search for “Yogi Bear foot fetish”, I think my ego will grow and grow until it wins 1st prize at the County Fair.

So here we grow!

I hope, for those of you who stick around, I can be a useful resource.  Don’t ever hesitate to email me via my site form if you want to jaw about something.

I’m going to make every effort to be more interesting.  Please bear with me while I figure out exactly what being more interesting entails for me.

Thanks again to everyone who participated.  I really appreciate your help in giving me writing prompts.  If there’s ever anything you want to hear my thoughts on via the blog, don’t hesitate to ask.  As I refocus on my freelancing and writing, I intend to provide high-quality content post each day.   And maybe some photos again soon too.  I know some of you will be happy to see them return.

It’s been hard to get much photography done, actually.  I’m trying to use as little unemployment as I can by getting freelance jobs instead.  I’ve a surprising number of people asking me about my services, and every single one of them was referred to me by someone who read this blog, or was themselves someone who read my blog or Twitter.  So thank you if you have been recommending my services.  It means a lot to me, and if there’s ever anything I can do in return, please let me know.

I hope you’ve all had a good weekend.  Monday’s regular content post will be up shortly.