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Michael considered fate at 17:47   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

Ten Reasons To Blog
That You Might Not Have Previously Considered

1. Writing is a skill, language is a tool, and communication is important in both work and play. By writing in a blog you are stretching your language muscles like a runner stretches their calves.


2. By writing in a public space you are imposing certain (perhaps vague) restrictions on the sewage outlet that is your brain. This is as important as the practice of writing itself, as self-censorship is an ever-useful act in the play of self-preservation. Getting it just right takes time.


3. By writing in a public space you are inviting an audience to observe and, perhaps, participate. Whether you allow comments on your blog or not, you will be exposed to feedback or a lack thereof. While a lack of feedback isn't necessarily a negative thing, feedback isn't necessarily a positive thing.. regardless, the two can be useful in gauging how well you are doing at point #1.


4. Unlike a paper journal, it's hard to lose a blog.


5. Expression is important and bottling everything up can result in a constipated mind or the belabouring of one particular point. If you don't have time for drawing, sidewalk art, or slapping the next Sisteen Chapel up on your bedroom ceiling, then maybe you can spend a few minutes a day thinking out loud, letting your thoughts bounce around on the keyboard like a pack of crazy pachinko balls.


6. If, like me, you're stuck writing lots of computer code then it can be good to stretch the fingers out and write plain old english every once in awhile. It probably improves my typing skills, in the end.


7. By writing down your thoughts and ideas "on paper" you are forced to communicate them in a realistic medium. Whether through verbalization or literaturization, fleshing thoughts out from the world of your mind to the world of your peers helps to make to make them more sound and concrete. This can sometimes even help you to clarify weak points or holes in your opinions/theories/emotions that you couldn't see before.


8. A blog can act as a thought-repository. If you record as many of your interesting and/or important ideas and moments that you can, but cannot remember something later then you can always sift through your archives to remind yourself; like a stock ticker tape.


9. When work should be done, you can always procrastinate by writing dumb lists on your blog. This might be the one point on this list that everyone has previously considered.


10. By blogging you will become more computer-savvy. For some who are already capable that may not be much of an incentive but I can say for myself - a non-webdesigning computer professional - that I've gleaned most of my CSS knowledge through attempts to improve the layout of this blog. Whether this is directly useful to you or not, it never hurts to know a little about other people's trades. A little knowledge can go a long way.