This weekend I started re-thinking how I blog and why I blog and whether I should be blogging at all. Here’s a snippet from an interview with Clive Thompson (his great blog is Collision Detection) that pretty much sums up my thoughts:

Some blogs exist solely for people who just surf all day long and they’re like, “Check this out, check this out, check this out.” They’ll post 20 things a day that are all one sentence long. And they’re really cool because they’re filtering the Internet for you. If you like their aesthetic, they’ll find things that are interesting and save you the work. They’re like a little concierge of culture and information.

Now I obviously like doing that, but I got busier when I went back to work, so I didn’t have as much time to blog. And I began to realize that what interested me more was posting about something that I’d discovered and no one else had. Or posting about something that other people were blogging about, but only if I had something interesting to say about it. So I blogged less frequently and I blogged longer little essays, things that were at least 500 words and sometimes up to 1000 words. Every posting became like a mini essay. And that’s the way I still write today.

…My goal is to find something thought provoking, offer people a new way to think about it, and let them check it out themselves. I sometimes just write something that I’m thinking about—there won’t be a link to anything, but that’s rare. Or if there’s something that’s really big on the blogosphere, I’ll try to find an unusual take on it.

I found a post from February where I wrote this: “I’m trying to make this thing as much like a virtual sketchbook/scrapbook/notebook as I can, and avoid the regular trappings of blogging…” What I found out though, is that I want two blogs: 1) the virtual sketchbook/notebook I was writing about and 2) the scrapbook where I just paste random crap from the web that I come across that is cool and interesting but doesn’t deserve much commentary.

So from now on, there will be a blog and a scrapblogtumblelog. Now, I’m going to quit messing around on the internet and go draw something that’s actually worth posting.

…when blogging seems stupid and pointless.

These days are usually sunny and bright.

Today is one of those days.

I’m trying to make this thing as much like a virtual sketchbook/scrapbook/notebook as I can, and avoid the regular trappings of blogging, like long link rolls and book reviews. (Even though I like those trappings on other blogs.) However, if you want that stuff, check out the del.icio.us and LibraryThing feeds on the sidebar.