the MARTINI SHAKER

I found a really great article a day or two ago by Nick Cernis that talked about his thoughts about abandoning the blog format on his site because of the stigma that comes along with the act of blogging, in particular, tablogging (tabloid-quality blogs).

It’s frightfully hard to write a blog without feeling that it must do something: even the most humble blogger is encouraged to create a unique selling point, target a “laser-focussed niche”, embrace social media, spawn viral content, track stats, and have a dedicated marketing drive; they must teach and inspire, build “authority”, start a “conversation”, and foster a “community”; they should seek out a purpose, a gameplan, a revenue stream, and an exit strategy.

Boy, does that ring a bell with me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stressed out over whether or not I’m staying “on topic,” or if enough eyeballs are seeing my site, or even at one point whether or not I was getting enough clicks to garner that $20.00 paycheck from Google.

And I know that I’m not alone. Before ever seeing the quote above, I’ve had many conversations with fellow blogging co-workers that were rife with worry and complaint that no one reads their blogs the way they’d like. Some even gave up because, after poring over their stats day-to-day, they decided it just wasn’t worth their time to continue. And why not? Even today it seems to me occasionally that something that’s supposed to be fun is really just a major self-inflicted headache. In a way, Nick thinks so too:

This socially enforced framework creates problems, not least of which in changing Web writing from an expressive, emotive celebration of free speech to an electronic stocking filler: tabloggers aren’t writing; they’re creating content — content that hopes to satisfy self-inflicted quotas, boost traffic, and burn another post on the digital altar to appease the blods. Tabloggers write from a sense of obligation; a feeling that their content must be regular and — worst of all — useful.

It’s that “obligation” that has haunted me for so long and ultimately is the reason why I don’t really post that often. That “obligation” to make sure that every single post is something “useful” and even “readable” is smothering, to be sure.

I thought of the path that this site has taken over the past 6 years when I received an email from a new employee at the agency this week. He’s a new Flash developer and he had found this site through the Adobe Flash RSS aggregator. It seems like a decade ago (and I guess it almost is, isn’t it?) that this site’s “focus” was on writing about Flash and After Effects. I tried hard to make sure I only wrote about those two topics.

And, you know what? I learned something very valuable. I learned that not only were those two topics unbearably boring for me to stick to, but also that in the grand scheme of things I am absolutely not qualified to write about Flash, especially Actionscript. There are others out there far better suited for filling that niche. Why did I even start down that road in the first place? I thought Flash Actionscript was a topic upon which I could get a great deal of traffic. That, my friends, is the WORST reason ever why you should start a blog.

So, finally realizing that I had started poorly, I shifted my offering and began writing about branding and Internet technology. But, the problem there was that it was the same branding and Internet technology crap that everyone else was writing about. It was just this horribly convoluted ouroboros of regurgitated information. I tried to spice it up by writing a few personal pieces, and I started getting yelled at in the comments by people who were offended that I wasn’t still writing Flash tips and that I was getting “off-topic.” To this day I’m still not sure why I’m aggregated by Adobe because I assure you every post is “off-topic” these days.

Around 2005 that’s when I said “fuck it” and started to find my own voice regardless of what I thought other people might need. I was full of cynicism at the time and began raging against the machine that is substandard creative work.

Oh, how I raged.

Underneath, every post was self-therapy against a job I had grown to not enjoy. This particular period for this site was actually pretty good I feel and was where I really began to gain traction with readership. It appeared I was not alone in my scathing vivisection of creative hackery. But, all good (or in this case, bad) things must come to an end. When I got my current job and started being happy in my job and the creativity that surrounded me, I pretty much ran out of things to say in this vein. It’s a lot like your favorite rock star who just didn’t produce work with the same amount of passion after they got off the drugs.

I’m not even sure what the focus of this site is anymore, nor am I sure that I even need one. A quick scan of the past few articles shows that it’s a mix of personal anecdotes and advertising shares/reviews that have recently been moved over to the ROCKS GLASS. So, where does that leave this place? Nick has a suggestion — ditch the blog format and just go for it:

I ditched the format when I saw what it was becoming. It’s saved my time, my sanity, my love of writing, and my desire to waffle on like a Belgian baker without wondering what extra crap I can add to my sidebar. As such, there’s no comment field at the foot of this essay, a fact that will sadden some — no doubt the same few who have long scrolled past this paragraph having never read it, pinkies primed to peck out a tired counter argument: “but it’s about creating a two-way dialogue,” they’d say. “Read-write instead of read only” or some fluffy computing analogy.

I like the thought of that. I love sharing my thoughts and my writing with all of you, but when it all comes down to it, this site is for me and the enjoyment that I get from writing. And, let’s face it, my posts rarely ever see the comment section burn up with activity. I love to hear what you think, but more often than not I hear about it elsewhere, whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or even real conversation.

So, yeah. You might find that the comments disappear on this site in the near future. I haven’t quite made up my mind on that just yet.

What I have made my mind up about, however, is that I’m tired of being a blogger. I’d much rather be a writer instead. And, really, isn’t that what it’s all supposed to be about in the first place?