On Blogging

Thomas P Barnett reflects on six years of daily work. It's a very sage and sobering summary, and I think he's right in understanding that blogging, by forcing a blogger to keep up with so many things, both leads to inevitable misjudgments in real time but also what he calls his

professional "RAM," or random-access memory storage capacity.

Then he writes something after my own heart:

I remain somewhat old-fashioned in my blogging, mixing in a portion of personal posts with the professional flow. I have always blogged under my own name on my eponymous website, and like it that way, which explains why I've turned down a lot of offers to blog on group sites or to expand my own site into a multi-voiced brand. Truth be told, I still enjoy the pure F-U! element of a personal web log, or diary.

I believe the honesty and freedom that accompanies that sole-proprietor approach is crucial to making sure the material takes me where I need to go, and not the other way around.

I've been lucky to have been able to retained such a "F-U! element" even when writing under the umbrella of Time or The Atlantic.  But I also have to say, as I approach my tenth anniversary of daily blogging, that the exposure and constant labor is grueling a decade in. Without Chris and Patrick and you, the Dish readers, I'd have ground to a halt a long time ago.