Early to rise

I woke up this morning a little after 4 AM. I thought I heard something downstairs. A cursory investigation revealed nothing alarming, but I realized as I headed back to bed that I simply wasn’t sleepy. I knew that if I got back into bed, I’d toss and turn without ever falling asleep.

So I got up and started my day. I worked on the 501(c)(3) application for FreeGeek Columbus, sent a few emails, and washed dishes. There’s something indescribably pleasant about being productive while my loved ones sleep.

While puttering about, I thought about Joey Hess’s comments on not blogging:

Ever been doing something and find yourself thinking about how you'd blog about the thing you're doing right then? I often hate that, it cuts me off from being in the moment. My antidote is to almost never blog about such situations.

I feel quite differently: I like considering how I might relate or retell some event here on my blog. It encourages me to pay closer attention to things, to recognize nuance and irony more than I might otherwise. It helps me remember the event in question by committing the salient points to memory for accurate posting later. I think it helps me be even more in the moment.

I wonder if my motivations for blogging – and my understanding of who my audience is – might shape that opinion. I use my blog as a personal record book, and a way to share things with people. Most of my family and local friends, and almost all of my friends who live outside of Ohio, read my blog so a single post serves to update a sizeable group of people as to what’s going on in my life. Sure, I could be old fashioned and send emails (or gasp physical letters!) but that means I need to keep everyone’s addresses up-to-date and I’m pretty poor about that kind of maintenance. The one-to-many relationship I have with my blog (one author, many readers) greatly simplifies my efforts to share important events with my family and friends.

But I also enjoy reading comments from complete strangers. I’ve learned some interesting things from comments posted to my site, and I value that kind of spontaneous interaction. If I don’t post things of interest, I’m preventing myself the benefit of learning something new from someone new.