Is It Blogworthy

Here is some unsolicited advice for any who wish to take it. It is always worth considering whether the post in your head is blogworthy. Take a moment to consider what you are doing and what you hope to accomplish. Spend a minute asking yourself if you could say the same thing in person and you'll likely save yourself some grief.

In the early days of my blogging career when I was completely anonymous I had very few rules for what I was willing to post. If I felt like writing about something than I did so. Since I had almost no readers it didn't occur to me that there was any reason to censor myself. And for the most part I really didn't.

Over time my feelings on the matter evolved and I found that I was beginning to develop unwritten rules for what I was willing to discuss online and what was left unwritten and unsaid. You can attribute the genesis of this to having people who know me discover this place. It wasn't so much that what I said was so embarrassing, but there were topics there that I didn't want to discuss with real people.

One of the other factors was in how I viewed The Shack. It wasn't just something that I had done for a lark. No longer was it solely a short term project that I was going to fumble with for a while. It became a real hobby and something that I enjoyed.

As I became more serious about it I also became more concerned with the quality of the posts. It became more important to me that the things that went up had a bit more substance than some of the earlier crap. That's not to say that crap doesn't find its way onto these pages. It does. But now there is sort of a formula that I follow.

I am more conscientous about trying not to post things that would embarrass others. Since I am willing to say just about anything to anyone that leaves a lot of room. But even so it doesn't mean that I am willing to go hog wild. It also means that I try not to engage in angry blogging.

Still I have to say that there are going to be contradictions. I use this place to air out the thoughts rolling around my melon. I use this place to document my life and to practice my writing.

With all those things in mind I am also careful about how much rewriting and editing I do. You can almost always improve a post by running through it several times. But since I like to use this as a workshop I am less inclined to do so. I kind of like to give things a rougher look.