Meh. Or: My feelings about blogging

So you're the one person that's been coming here.

I'm sorry to say it (no, that's a lie), but I'm not all that interested in blogging. At least not at this time. I'm not sure when I came to this realization -- it might have been years ago, to be honest -- but on a whim on the date you see above I decided to act on it.

Most of the crap written here in the past (I can't emphasis the word "crap" enough) was pretty old, especially by Internet standards. I started this blog way back in December 2007 when I worked for a small newspaper. During my time there, I never developed a consistent theme or identity for this minuscule sliver of the blogosphere. When I left the paper in August 2010, I had aspirations to finally do just that; but in the back of my head I knew I likely wasn't going to. The back of my head usually calls it correctly.

For six years now I've worked with online content, and I've come to realize something about the Internet: It's noisy, and most of the people making the noise should shut the hell up. Therein lay the reasons for my waned interest in the blogging format: I just don't have anything worth saying, or opinions worth expressing, in this medium.

There's a balancing act in blogging, between reflection and timeliness, that I never mastered. I prefer reflection. And that's not counting the energy that goes into crafting what is -- in my opinion, anyhow -- a good blog post: solid writing, a clear expression of ideas, a nice turn-of-phrase or two, linking to related items, wry humor, and perhaps an illustrative photo.

To be honest, I find it all exhausting -- especially when aiming for consistent updates -- and not worth the investment of time and effort. I think it's because I have to be both writer AND editor in too short a span of time in order to post something that meets my self-imposed standards. Ultimately, if I'm writing for myself to essentially think out loud anyhow, why not just do that privately and contribute a bit less noise?

I wrestled the notion of turning this into a platform with a more professional bend (although that's what it was supposed to be all along). That notion lost. There are so many people already blogging about web content, higher education, and web content in higher education. And they're doing a great job of it and making a name for themselves. That's awesome. It's just not for me. I'd just be one more person with nothing worth saying trying to get people to pay attention to me.

So I'm wrapping things up here, perhaps indefinitely. I'll continue to happily pollute Twitter until it goes the way of the Dodo bird, though ; that's a format much better suited to my love of pithy one-liners and smart-ass humor.