Hello Again

Good news! The blog is back.

A number of people (greater than ten, and less than two million) have asked me in-person and online if I would start again. Until now, my answer was a hearty shrug, followed by "probably not."

To be honest, lately I’ve been frustrated. I like writing about things and coming up with thoughts on a variety of subjects. I like reading and learning and synthesizing what I learn, and I enjoy putting it out there somewhere for others to take things away. I like the idea that I’m going to say something and you’re going to read it and it’s going to help.

But I get frustrated because of how hard it is to make changes. Changes require constantly confronting your old habits with a draining degree of self-awareness. Change meets resistance, and if going to the gym teaches you anything, it’s that repeatedly working against resistance saps your strength. However, the other thing it teaches you is that you need that challenge to become stronger. Eventually, if you keep at it, you may look back at your old challenges and think, “remember when I could barely handle this?” And you will laugh, and proceed to do something else you can barely do.

I want to help other people change successfully, I want to change myself, but I can’t always see those changes in action because change is hard. It often takes a while. Epiphanies and realizations are nice and inspiring, but putting them into practice is tough. It’s tough for me, it’s tough for you, it’s generally tough for everybody.

Not being able to see some kind of concrete result of my writing makes it difficult to stay motivated. But when people ask me if I’m going to write again, it’s like a little shot of espresso for my ego. It makes me feel like I did change something, because when the writing stopped, somebody noticed.

That is, ironically, a selfish reason to start again. In fact, it’s doubly selfish, because without people to write for, I don’t do a lot of writing. I originally started writing a blog because writing helps me think; it keeps me critical, it keeps me mentally invested in my own progress. But hey, as long as people want to read and I want to write, it should all work out in the end, I think.

However, we aren’t just returning to the status quo! I’m going to try and do something slightly different. One of the last major events I went to, several people told me that I should start streaming or podcasting or something that they could subscribe to me, because they would totally pay me to keep writing or listen to me talk, or something.

And I thought, “hey, that sounds kind of cool.” Writing and reading takes me time and energy, especially when I want to come up with ideas that don’t stink. If it genuinely makes a difference to people and they want to support me, then I want there to be a way for that to happen (remember: selfish). So I’m thinking of starting a Patreon account.

If you don't know, Patreon is essentially crowd-funding. People can donate to me monthly as a form of support for the things I make. The difference between Patreon and, say, Kickstarter is that I don’t necessarily have a financial target to keep making the blog. The blog is not held hostage to a given ransom; you keep getting words whether you (and others) pay for them or not.

In short, the support is strictly voluntary. The incentive to donate is because you think me and my blog are cool. If you don’t think those two things are cool enough for [dollar amount per month] then you can give less. If [dollar amount greater than zero] is still too much, give nothing! And if [zero dollars] is too much to get you to read but you're here anyhow, then both of us need to rethink our lives.

But I also want to have neat incentives for people who support me, so I think what I’ll do are things like Q&A for patrons, topic suggestions for blogs, things like that. The patrons will--possibly?--have more say in the kind of things I write about and questions I answer, though everybody will get to read them. Honestly I am still not sure everything really works, and so I will be using the time-honored technique of “winging it” as I go through this.

I might still abandon the idea (the Patreon, not the blog) if, after some more looking into it, I don't think it's valuable. So if you have any thoughts on that, please let me know.

That is it for now, but rest assured there will be a new and very interesting post this week. Please react with all due excitement, and keep fragile heirlooms out of reach of your celebratory gyrations.

Thanks everybody. I’ll talk to you soon.