Put a grain of boldness into everything you do
“Put a grain of boldness into everything you do.”
–Baltasar Gracian
I used to write a lot more than I do these days. Sure, there are tons of Twitter and Facebook posts, but those are mostly stream of consciousness instead of exploring ideas in any meaningful way. I have (not so) recently been putting thoughts in Day One. It’s a mobile app that masquerades as a journal, but I’ve never enjoyed writing longer pieces on either an iPhone or iPad. I know there are keyboards, but then you lose the mobility. As it is now, I tap out a few thoughts that I want to expand on and hope that I remember to spend a few minutes at my regular computer. That’s what tonight is (hopefully) about. At my current rate, I get a topic into Day One roughly once a month. There’s a backlog, but if I can convince myself to use two a month then I should eventually catch up.
When I tapped out that thought in the few seconds I had one day, I also included the idea of quantity/quality/exposure. I used to post very often to Livejournal until I acquired a Twitter account. At that point, for a small time I tried to maintain both. Twitter lends itself to quick thoughts that others can easily comment on and share. Even Livejournal made comments pretty easy, but very few people interacted with my content. This journal makes comments harder because of the tremendous spam problem. In the end, I have to ask myself whether comments and social interaction are important in a journal like this. My Twitter habit isn’t going to go away so my friends and acquaintances can interact with that like they currently do. This venue affords me the ability to take a fraction of those thoughts and attempt to understand my interactions, reactions, beliefs, and purpose with them by digging in and exploring.
Even as I write this, I’m sifting through the hundreds of spam comments that have been posted since my last entry. I block them all by default and hand-review every comment to prevent you from being subjected to the unwanted spam. It’s the least I can do for inviting you here to read my rambling thoughts. Tell me it’s worth it. Does anyone read this? More importantly, do you want to interact with these thoughts in a dialog that is hindered by the current comment process? Even if nobody reads, I’ll still write because I think I need this in my life. Feel free to remain as a lurker and nothing will change, except (hopefully) my posting frequency.