Why I got into it
Dude, that was like three years ago. I don’t really remember. It was something like this: There were some blogs that had a big influence on me back in my late college days (Newmark’s Door, Freakonomics, and Marginal Revolution) and so I started reading lots and lots of them—to the point that I was reading so much that I felt I needed an outlet – or at least a storage closet – for all the stuff that was inspiring me.
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Most readers are probably already bored, so to save precious pixel space, I’m putting the rest of the post below the fold.
Why I stay(ed) in it
A non-trivial part of my motivation is sheer embarrassment. I want to keep churning out new stuff to keep pushing the shit I had typed previously farther into the abyss. I’m only half-joking.
There is also something quite nice about making writing a regular routine, and even moreso about having the feedback and conversations that go along with it. If you’ve been around this blog long enough you know that there are some really smart cookies reading and commenting on this blog. As the blogger, this is both frightening and extremely gratifying.
Blogging is also a better way to “share myself” with people who know me in all my fleshiness. The types of things that get blogged about don’t often easily come up in conversations, especially with me being a sometimes eerily quiet guy. I think my friends and family who read this blog know me better because of it. And that’s certainly not nothing.
What *is* blogging for me?
To put it in a sentence, blogging, for me, is this:
A public record of things I found (1) interesting, (2) important, or (3) just things for whatever silly reason I couldn't stop thinking about.
This blog has become a kind of creature of its own—and I like that. I don’t like to call it *my* blog because it’s not. I and my previous selves wrote the posts on this blog, but the blog when considered as a whole has grown into something completely independent of “Me.” In other words, it’s not a snapshot of my thoughts but a historical record of my inspirations, interpreted by people who are not me. Besides, I disagree with 80% of the things my previous selves have written.
How hard is it to keep chugging?
Not very. When I first started, I suspected it would be very difficult given how many bloggers I’ve witnessed flame out, so I initiated some strict self-disciplinarian clauses. I would line up posts weeks in advance just to make sure that I had plenty of reserves in case the day or week or month came when I wouldn’t feel like touching the thing.
Eventually, I relaxed. I don’t have any posts lined up in advance anymore. I almost always publish the things immediately after I finish writing them, which is bad writing practice, I know, but people don’t seem to mind.
I’ll say again that a non-trivial part of what keeps me going is sheer embarrassment.
Do I read and/or revise old posts?
I regularly read things I’ve posted in the past few days, and will edit them if I don’t like the way something sounds.
I rarely go back and look at posts older than a few weeks to avoid mega cringe factor, but when I do, the shock and repulsion is often unbearable. But no matter how cringeworthy the ancient post, I do not delete them precisely because that’s not “Me”—I cannot hold my past selves accountable for their past faults. Rather than being tied to my identity, old posts are a historical account of who “I” was, albeit a sometimes disturbing account.
What keeps me from sucking?
Judging by my feelings toward old posts, I wouldn’t say I’ve been successful at not sucking, but I can say with confidence there is one Big thing has made me less sucky than I otherwise might’ve been: The knowledge that folks like Bob and Xan and Anna and Robert and Mark and Ben and Rebecca and Hugh and Andy and Harriet and Nathan and Rick &c *might* be reading forces me by mere audience-factor to raise my game.
What do I think other people think of this blog?
I suspect there are a handful of people who would say that this blog is one of the top two or three blogs that they would least like to do without, and that’s really who I write for. Well, maybe it’s not accurate to say that I write *for* them, but they are definitely who I have in mind when I write posts.
Then I suspect there’s a much larger contingent of casual readers who might click to open a post in Google Reader if the title sounds sufficiently interesting but who may not have any conception of who I am or what this blog is about (and I wouldn’t blame them, because neither do I!).
I suspect that for some regular readers this blog is the type that has the tendency to get backed up in Google Reader, with lots of “new” posts waiting to be read. In other words, I don’t think this blog typically delivers an “ooh, goodie” feeling when new posts arrive. It’s probably more like “oh man, there’s another thing from Wehr in the World that I’ll have to add to the queue.” But I wouldn’t be bothered by that because that’s how a lot of my favorite blogs are. With the Scott Adamses and Colin Marshalls and Oliver Burkemans of the blog world, I know that their posts are going to challenge me, so I line up their posts and wait to read them when I am alert and focused enough to give them my full attention. If this blog is in that category for some people, then I take that as a major compliment.
Where do the ideas come from?
All over the place.
All over the damn place.
Not uncommonly: Books, blogs, field observations, porch ruminations, pesky bedtime thoughts, car rides, and conversations.
How do I decide what’s post-worthy?
There isn’t really any thought that goes into it. I almost always immediately know whether I want to blog about something.
But once I’ve sat down and tried to write about it, then I’ll often say, no, that’s not blog-worthy, at least not the way it’s currently manifested. The ideas written about to posts published ratio is something like 2.5 to 1.
Which posts are most salient to me?
This is a good question. (Nice one, Justin.) I would say that the ideas loosely contained within these posts are the ones that keep coming back to me, often in a corrective manner (from most to least recent):
Ambition and online dating
What I wish I knew when I was 18, er 26
Wolves, incentives, and maybe even parenting
Relationships built on words
Life is meaningless. Who cares.
We expect our friends to be discriminating
Vulnerabilities are the currency of relationships
The Chuck Close principle
Appreciative thinking
The problem with clichés
Why vocabulary matters
Garrison Keillor on public speaking
I just realized that a disproportionate number of salient posts come from those tagged as ‘relationships,’ which probably means I should spend more time in that topic area.
Where/when is the writing done?
Where: In the back corner of the living room, in between the couch and the fireplace at my joke of a desk. Here is a visual from June that I found amusing for being a kind of exaggerated representation of the mess that is my life:
When: Typically at night. Often very late at night.
How long does it take, typically?
It varies, of course. But it varies in surprising ways. It varies more widely than you would imagine and more weirdly than you’d imagine. Some long posts slide out like jello. On the other hand, some short posts come out with all the ease of a sideways turd.
On average, this summer, I spent 1.7 hours per day writing. (Yes, I actually track this stuff.) But only a fraction of the words produced during that time get blogged, maybe 30%.
What’s my 5 year plan? What are my aspirations for this mofo?
5 year plans are for wussies. I do my planning in 5,000 year increments. My aspirations are simple: I’m counting on this blog to be my ticket to immortality. I imagine in 5,000 years this blog will have a cult following on the level of Shatner, complete with t-shirts, collector mugs, and bobblehead dolls. Fan clubs will get together to share their favorite lines, all the while giggling, ooh-ing and ahh-ing about how clever and wise-beyond-his-years that Justin Wehr cat was.
