Wednesday, January 18, 2012

New Year Post - late, as usual

I suppose, depending upon your point of view, we are either quickly approaching the Mayan apocalypse or it's a new year and new resolutions. A time for reflection or a time for resolutions. Or, in my case, a time for both reflection and resolution as well as writing up a new blog entry - a task with which I've been seemingly lax as of late. I average may a post or two a month lately, and sometimes even that is a bit of a stretch. It's not that I lack for any number of topics upon which to write, more often it is the time and the desire to do so (at the same time).


However, part of it has also been some reflection on my part about the purpose of this blog. Unfortunately (or even fortunately, depending upon one's point of view), I have a variety of interests and that means that many of my posts are all across the board in terms of subject matter. Politics, history, China, philosophy, technology, social commentary, international relations, science and anything else in between that happens to catch my eye/ear is potential fodder. But that seems to clog up this blog and render it interesting to only a few people at any given time. To make it worse, I would not classify myself as an expert in any given matter. Instead, I have some knowledge on a great number of subjects that allows me to sometimes see things through a very different perspective than others but one that can occasionally be moot to the subject itself.


So I've been pondering if perhaps I should be more focused in this blog - or to perhaps create an entirely new blog or series of blogs to cover each of my varied interests. The problem with that is that I will likely update those even less frequently than I update this one and that would make me into a rather poor (or, in my case, poorer) blogger. Besides, I already blog occasionally on the technical forum LessThanDot (disclaimer, I am one of the owners of that site) though I've not done anything there in a while (though I have one or two that I am in the midst of putting down on paper in order to post), either. And while that should handle at least one of my passions (technology), I can't go looking for others to do the rest of my various ideas (well, ok, I could do guest posts on SeeingRedInChina - the only blog I read with any real regularity and the best China-related blog in my very humble opinion) so I wonder if anyone can offer suggestions or ideas on how I should approach this conundrum.


And thus ends my reflection for now. As for resolution, writing more is at the top of the list and I guess this post is a good start. So now my new year (well, ok a little over two weeks into it) is off to its proper start and hopefully will continue to roll on at a good clip.

Oh, and just noticed that this is my 100th blog post. Woohoo! Over the course of the last 2 1/2 years I've managed 100 posts. I'm not going to do the math average for that number since I'm pretty sure it's pathetic. But that's what resolutions are for!  :-)

2 comments:

  1. I just read 'Willpower' by Baumeister and Tierney - it covers the last 20+ years of research on decision making and resolve to stick at a task - or willpower. It's only 260 pages, and the last chapter, the conclusions - is only 22 pages.

    I really liked it, enough that I'm putting it in my to-read-again pile. Mayan apocalypse or not.

    Whether you bounce around on topics or not, I'll swing by about once a week to check on your blog.

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  2. Thanks for the comment, James. Hopefully I'll have enough good content to keep you coming back... :-)

    And I'll have to look into "Willpower". Goodness knows I can use all the help I can get. ;-)

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