January 10th, 2013

This Is Not About New Year’s Resolutions

In 2012, I went to the gym 118 times, and wrote a total of 18 blog posts. In 2002, I wrote 39 blog posts and didn’t go to the gym at all.

Things change with time? Yes, probably; I was ten years younger, relatively newly married, and childless. I had more free time, and more time to invest in sharing my intellectual energy and outrage about the world. There was also no Facebook, no Twitter, fewer mechanisms for sharing “thoughts” (is that what we’re doing there?) in ways that–for me, at least–sometimes feel like they undercut the investment required in really thinking and writing something out beyond its 140-character Twitter limit.

Still: there are 365 days in 2013, and even if I go to the gym 120 times, that leaves 245 open days. My goal is to do a better job balancing those items this year, which won’t mean 245 blog posts but should mean inching closer to 42. It will likely mean more regular social media “vacations”–planned getaways from the incessant and sometimes distracting stream–and at the same time, a renewed emphasis on using those tools to share with a purpose (“speak softly, and carry a big stick”).

This is not a resolution for the new year, it’s just an articulation of a goal.

***

I laughed recently when a colleague reminded me that during her interview several years ago I had argumentatively proposed that “blogging is dead.” She had come well-prepared to talk about blogging, since she had seen my blogs and thought this would be a good discussion topic for an interview at a communications agency. She wasn’t wrong.

I don’t know that blogging is any more dead than anything else. Long-form journalism? Facebook? (You’ve noticed all those cranky users leaving Facebook in droves, right? Headed over to Google+, right…) Sometimes I think what has died is the capacity for sustained, rigorous, and self-confronting analysis of both facts and opinion. There is no shortage of content in this “user-generated content” world of ours. What I have always wanted was content that said something different, something that mattered, whether in 39 posts or just 18 of them.

I guess you can call that a resolution for 2013 if you really want to.

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October 4th, 2012

All the world’s a stage

One of the more interesting (and consistent) challenges I deal with at work is explaining to potential clients (and sometimes current ones) the fragmentation in the media world. On one level, this is understood; it is precisely because people understand there is a challenge that they seek out a company like ours.

At the same time, it can be difficult to grasp. The major opinion-leaders and “influencers” remain, but their overall impact might be diminished. Or they may exert influence, but in ways that require support. Where there was once an audience–perhaps 85% of that audience were your subscriber base, and another 15% were the random people inspired by specific programs–there are now many different audiences, consuming many different sources of information in just as many different forms.

Here is one more very blunt way to think about it.

September 9th, 2012

The “Food Pyramid” of Irritating Drivers

Now that we are past Labor Day, the amount of time spent driving around should diminish. Which might mean I’ll feel less frustrated by some of these pesky road irritants. At least until my next trip.

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August 30th, 2012

This Speaks For Itself

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