Swing low

Getting back into the swing of writing regularly here never really happened in 2006. When I look back at my archives, I see I only posted 11 times the entire year. And that includes three posts (1, 2, 3) that weren’t really writing-based, as much as they were simple design and code experiments.

Busyness accounts for a lot of it. 2006 brought a lot of changes for me, personally and professionally. Planning my wedding, putting Stopdesign as a business on hold to go work for Google full-time, getting married and honeymooning afterward, moving to a new place, getting a dog, and the life and responsibility that comes with all of the above. 2006 treated me very well — I’m certainly not complaining.

Another major reason for the lull in writing was general blog burnout. I was tired of writing on my own site. With greater numbers of readers building through 2004 and 2005, I felt greater pressure to write longer article-like posts with take-away content in every entry. More nutrition in every bite. And I was tired of other blogs. Tired of keeping up with hundreds of feeds. Tired of posts that pandered for comments or held contests to gain traffic, or those that recycled another me-too meme or blabbed about the wonders of Web-2-point-whatever.

So I stopped using my feed reader completely. I let go of the pressure to keep up. I let go and just lived my life. If I wasn’t working, I wasn’t really on the Web. I only visited sites I liked and sites of my friends occasionally, just to keep loosely updated on their work, thinking, and lives.

Lately, my interest is piqued again. Not so much by a fear of not keeping up with the world of blogs and news and events. But by a general desire to write for the sake of writing. In my daily life, I’m exposed to design in entirely new ways that I’ve never experienced before. I face new challenges. I encounter new ideas, situations, and interactions. In many ways, it feels like I’m just starting out in the world.

So I look back to my first post of this blog, and think of returning to my roots. Write for my own record, not what I think others want to read. To lay out my thoughts, responses, and reactions to my industry and the events that surround my career and interests. To chronicle the bits and information around me. Short posts or long ones; on-topic or not; doesn’t matter. Just write.