Joi Ito's blog-block

When we die, what would you rather have on your tombstone: "He was a great blogger" or "He was a great person"?  When you're ninety-plus and bed-ridden looking back at your life would you rather say: "dang, I've had an interesting life" or "dang, I had a great blog!"  Maybe if we're lucky we can "have it all," but I for one know where my priorities lie.

Joi Ito is worried he's lost his blogging edge, or is becoming boring, that he receives a lot of criticism about his blog, and that he wrestles with blog-block. He asked his readers how to deal with this, and got a lot of advice and reaction.

Joi may or may not know this, but he was the initial catalyst that led to a chain reaction of events and encounters with people, which ultimately resulted in my decision to leave CNN for the blogosphere. (Not that I really know what I'm doing now, but I'm one heck of a lot more fulfilled and happy than I was before.)

I just posted my own comment on the long discussion thread which has largely become about whether he should care what anybody else thinks about his blog. The general consensus is that he shouldn't. As I said to Joi: "Unfortunately, the annoying people out there are not very forgiving or empathetic about the fact that you are a human being - or that any blogger other than themselves is a human being with feelings. Ignore them."  But like David Weinberger I also agree that the shift in his blog probably reflects a shift in his life.

I am not the most prolific blogger myself. This is for many reasons. One reason is that I don't think I should waste time and energy commenting on issues about which I have no expertise or first-hand knowledge and have nothing meaningful or substantive to add. I feel like I've got better things to do than spend time linking to stuff that everybody and their dog is linking to anyway. (Which is why, for example, I did not get involved with the Newsweek discussion.)

Another reason is that if you're going to spend time out there learning new stuff, meeting new people, and having new experiences (plus train for a marathon, get enough sleep, and have a social life), you're not going to have as much time to blog as you would otherwise. It's a tradeoff. If you ask me to choose between having an interesting blog and an interesting life, there's no contest. If I get less traffic as a result and never become an A-lister or become able to make Blogads money, so be it.

Plus, lately I've been spending a lot of time on the Global Voices project, some of which involves blogging on the GV blog, but also involves working on the aggregator and networking with people both electronically and in person. That's a priority for me.

As I said to Joi, not all good bloggers are good people, and I think he's a good person. That's way more important. At the end of the day, I'll follow his blog no matter what he writes - or how often - because I like and admire him. And I'm thankful that he exists because otherwise my life might be very different.

Comments

[Joi Ito]

Thanks Rebecca! So... in other words.. you're saying... "get a life!" right? ;-)

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

No, you definitely have one!! You're one of those rare people who seems able to "do it all" somehow. Some of your critics need to get a life, though.

[Jon Garfunkel]

This doesn't surprise me. I think this reflects the downsides of the ego-centric nature of blogging, as compared to group-centered communications. I covered this and more in a recent paper on bloggers and values.

Jon