The One Post A Day challenge continues as the end of the month marches steadily towards us. I watch on the sidelines, encouraging others and still reading. It's nice to connect, even at 6:00am while the coffee is brewing and I can't yet get into ANGEL for another hour. As I peruse my community's progress in the long distance running event, I see that many of my comrades are starting to stumble with the onslaught of additional work which the beginning of a semester invariably brings with it. Most lasted longer than I did, but are still, in the end, being forced to make choices of work priorities over personal priorities. The ones that continue to post are almost demi-gods, in my book; certainly they don't seem to be as radically effected by the students' return to UP. (Right now, I'm wishing I wasn't radically effected either.) I'm glad others are continuing to blog, because those of us who've had to stop are still watching from the sidelines shouting encouragement to those bloggers still in it to the end. These have been really thoughtful posts, allowing me the chance for some great insight
into my fellow coworkers' daily lives and passions. Between twitter, the LDSC, and this blogging event, I am learning a lot about my community, and it's really been an eye opener into just how smart these people are (yeah, and perhaps even a bit intimidating).
Shelby Thayer has a marketing
blog and it is ridiculously well written and insightful. I know I will
never be doing that kind of a blog. But today's post
(written at 1:15am) really resonates with me because Shelby admits to
obsessive editing of her entries--occasionally to the detriment of her
post. I totally get that; I have the same edit obsession, although it
plays out a bit differently for me. When I get hit with a thought, I
drop it into the blog as soon as I can, but with the intention of
letting it sit, marinate, then going back and put final touches on it
and gloriously hitting "publish." This, it seems, is the error in my
process. Invariably I don't have the time to go back and "make it
pretty" and, even worse, mentally that thought falls into the "blogged"
category where, in reality, it is in the "written draft, not published"
category. Good thoughts, but bad practice. While I haven't been able to
do the daily post challenge, I have tried to step up my posts somewhat
and made my own personal challenge: to let it go. Get the post written and out there, because then it is truly done.
Cole talks about blogging in the moment and letting it go. It is really hard to ignore the editor in my brain who sees every single "he" instead of "the" or "of" rather than "off" but I wonder if it's simply my form of Phil Hartman's SNL character, The Anal Retentive Chef. I let my obsessiveness with "getting it just right" get in the way of "just getting it". Clearly, Cole blogs in the moment and, by definition, we aren't writing doctoral dissertations. That's where the editing obsession has a valid job to do. In the reality of web 2.0, it is more about the organic authenticity of "getting it" and it seems, perhaps, the message has finally made it through. I won't promise that I won't go in later and fix a typo, but, before I walk away from the post, I'm hitting publish.
Sometimes you've just gotta let it go.
Cole talks about blogging in the moment and letting it go. It is really hard to ignore the editor in my brain who sees every single "he" instead of "the" or "of" rather than "off" but I wonder if it's simply my form of Phil Hartman's SNL character, The Anal Retentive Chef. I let my obsessiveness with "getting it just right" get in the way of "just getting it". Clearly, Cole blogs in the moment and, by definition, we aren't writing doctoral dissertations. That's where the editing obsession has a valid job to do. In the reality of web 2.0, it is more about the organic authenticity of "getting it" and it seems, perhaps, the message has finally made it through. I won't promise that I won't go in later and fix a typo, but, before I walk away from the post, I'm hitting publish.
Sometimes you've just gotta let it go.
Excellent points here.
But I would add that you're lucky you even get notes down: I have busy enough days quite a bit that even that's out of reach for me, and the thought goes flitting away entirely.
Kind of like I was saying about usability testing, you've really just got to stop trying to please everyone--including yourself--and just do it.
Thanks for the kind words, Robin! It has taken me a bit to comment here and I apologize! Whew! I can't believe we're almost at the end of the post-a-day challenge. I've learned so much from everyone. *Way* more than I ever anticipated.
You know, it's funny you do the same thing I do ... put some thoughts into a draft post. I actually did this very same thing over the weekend. When I went back to "edit" it, I didn't remember what my thought process was when I jotted it down. I had to laugh.
: )
Testing my comments. Not like anyone cares...