colinwalker
colinwalker
I relished Om Malik's post "Blogs are thought spaces" in which he said that he started blogging for two reasons: to share what he had learnt as a reporter, and to have a place to think out loud. This reminded me of something I wrote in 2014 where, I too, said I like to think... colinwalker.blog
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amit
amit

@colinwalker this is such a great post Colin. I am fascinated by the concept of outboard memory, the commonplace book. Blogging was always supposed to be the log (of thoughts) you maintain on web.

Over the years it lost its fundamental reason for existence and became something too formal, too complicated.

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colinwalker
colinwalker

@amit Yeah, some managed to keep going but I was guilty of letting it become something it shouldn’t. Glad I’m getting back on track now though.

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amit
amit

@colinwalker same here. I cared so little on what (& how) I was writing about in my early blogging days, thought so little about everything meta to the posts (the tags, the numbers etc). A thought kindled within was worth jotting. Wish I get back to that level of activity.

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In reply to
colinwalker
colinwalker

@amit My early blogging days (2003 - 2008) were a lot better but I became obsessed with becoming a thought leader and I think that’s why I ended up dropping the blog for a couple of years.

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akurjata
akurjata

@colinwalker @amit in retrospect, the worst thing to happen to my writing was to have a few “hits” and a suddenly higher subscriber count. I stopped posting until I felt like I had something great to say... which wound up being not posting... Now my followers are gone and I am free to do what I want :)

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colinwalker
colinwalker

@akurjata @amit Freedom from pressure (real or imagined) is such a wonderful thing.

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mrkrndvs
mrkrndvs

@colinwalker great post. Wrote a reply collect.readwriterespond.com/blogs-as-... might have gone to spam though ...

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amit
amit

@akurjata @colinwalker same here. There was a time when some blogs became big suggesting what other blogs should do - SEO, identify audience, gain subscribers, etc. I started focusing more on that, less on actually writing.

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amit
amit

@colinwalker agreed, especially if it means letting your mind wander free.

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akurjata
akurjata

@colinwalker @amit it sure is!

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colinwalker
colinwalker

@mrkrndvs Thanks for the reply, Aaron. Yes, the way our usage of blogs morphs over time is very interesting to observe.

Don’t know why but I didn’t get a mention at all 😢

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colinwalker
colinwalker

@mrkrndvs Looking at your source I see you have p-in-reply-to which I don’t think is valid. Normal usage is u-in-reply-to.

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mrkrndvs
mrkrndvs

@colinwalker hmmm, I wonder how that happened? I use the Post Kinds plugin for WordPress

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mrkrndvs
mrkrndvs

I just checked @c blog and he is using "p-in-reply-to" as well. What is the difference @colinwalker?

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colinwalker
colinwalker

@mrkrndvs Hmm 🤔 I didn’t think the p- was valid any more.

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colinwalker
colinwalker

@mrkrndvs Just replied in Slack.

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