Ever since Carmen Dunjko told me at mb5 in 2000, that she’d really like to read and hear my regular, opinionated takes on things, I’ve been thinking about posting regularly to subvert.

So that’s 6 years of thinking about it. Feeling it’s a good idea. But it didn’t do it until now. Why?

1. I am used to published polished pieces. Would this writing come across as unprofessional?
2. If I “blow my wad” on an idea in a blog, would I be able to sell it to publications or in later performances?
3. Blogging became trendy. That’s enough reason for any person who ever felt like an outsider (ok, boil down that generalization and you get me) to avoid doing something. People told me that Burning Man would change my life for 5 years so I refused to go. Growing up Jewish in a small place, evangelism was not my friend (I did later get over myself and went to Burning Man and met my girlfriend, now fiancée, but that’s another story for another post).
4. What if I couldn’t keep it up every day. I don’t want to commit to something I can’t follow through on. Jason Kottke explained to me last week that I could “let my readers/watchers” know what to expect–that I’d only post as often as I could. So I’m letting you all know now that I’m not sure if I’ll be posting bi-weekly. Maybe 5 times a day. Probably at least once ever two weeks.
5. I couldn’t figure out how to organize. Is it ok to not have a strict topical focus? subvert and my comedy cover so many topics. Will a business audience that wants to read my media analysis and Open Source Management ideas freak out about my gay marriage or sex postings? Will I want to write jokes every day? Can I write about a bunch of different things? Can I still say fuck? Once again Jason Kottke saved me. It’s all about the connecting. So I’ve just decided not to worry about it. If I’m going to sing the praises of openness and inclusion and honesty, no sense in censoring or making silos. (And how did corporate business decide to use farming metaphors?)
6. Once video really hit the Net I knew that I couldn’t keep avoiding the blog. This is why I was interested in the Net in the first place. I first learned about it in 1994, right after working for New Line Cinema and thought “this is how it’s not going to be up to just 5 guys in Hollywood to decide what gets distributed.” So I committed to video blogging and I signed a deal with the new video start-up dabble to be their spokesperson and regular video blogger.
7. For a long while, overanalysing and worrying about future problems felt like doing something (hey, between being Jewish and law school, this is a piece of phantom logic that is really hard to completely break).
8. I went to SXSW last week and did both of my shows Cookie, The Law Project and an Open Source Management panel. All three audiences plus random people in the hall kept asking me to blog. I could stand my own hypocrisy no more. I wanted to continue conversations that I was starting.
9. I’ve realized that avoiding blogging was becoming more energy consuming than actually doing it. So here I am, out of the blogging closet. I can’t wait to hear from you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 4:52 pm and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.