You Should Start a Blog

"You should start a blog." That was the suggestion from two of my old friends. I knew what they meant - that it would be good for me - but I couldn't help but laugh at the thought.

We live in a world where many people, perhaps most people, have a few dead blogs in their past. But even in such a world, I have far more than my share. Just off the top of my head (I'm sure I'll forget a few)

• I had a blog about my son that I kept up for about three years (by far the longest running blog I've ever had).
• I've had at least half a dozen blogs for table top RPGs I've run over the years and another half a dozen for games that I planned which never got off the ground.
• I've had a pair of blogs for creative projects I was working on with other people that never really took off.
• I had a blog where I talked about poker.
• I had a blog where I talked about Dungeons and Dragons.
• I had a blog where I talked about Aspergers.
• I had a blog where I was compiling job links for Edmonton 
• I had a blog where I talked about all the neurosis in my house.
• I had a blog with Margaret where we would choose a topic each week and each write our view on it.

Now, in fairness to myself, very few of these were the stereotypical failed blog where the author wrote two posts and then never got back to it again. I already mentioned that one of these blogs received content for three years (though it got slower and slower over time) while another had content almost daily for six months (and when I gave up on it would get between 200 and 900 hits per day).

No, my blogs haven't looked like the stereotypical ones because I don't have the problem so many people run into; I actually love to write. My problem is that I have real trouble staying focused.  Generally my blogs start fast and furious and continue that way until there is some distraction in my life that pulls me away from the blog for a little while. Then, after the break, I find my love for that blog's topic has diminished and I can't bring myself to write any more about it.

So one might wonder why I have not started a personal blog where I could just write anything that is on my heart. I guess that really comes down to the difference between a blog and a diary; that with one you expect that other people might read it, and the other not. With the expectation that another might read what I am writing, I have always worried that I might be violating others' expectations.

But having said I have long feared luring others into one type of blog, before switching it up on them, I may be putting myself on that track right now; I am starting this blog with no idea what it is going to be about, only that I am going to do some writing.

I have named it Robbie's Dad because after switching email addresses pretty much annually from the late 90s till the mid-00s I have stuck with robbiesdad for more than eight years now; maybe that name can do the same for me and blogs.

Robbie and his dad.