Blog Revamp

I have not kept my schedule for writing at all. I haven’t done a blog in so long. my “daily” journal may be all-time averaging weekly, if that. Something has got to change, because I do think writting consistently is a good thing, and if I am not giving myself the environment to do it, no amount of challenges will change my lack of engagement. Because of this, I will be sunsetting the opinions and daily journal aspect of this website.

The idea of having the three had merit, but the categorization was unnecesary when content was not flowing. If anything, having these additions only added rules and cognitive load that increased friction. It is hard to write without prompt. The idea of the daily journal being daily helped, but only kicked the core issue down a level. I was not writing about life, and what I do, and what I think, I was writing almost a simulacrum of those things, and only further added friction to the process of writing. So why make things hard when I can make things easy?

I go to a lot of events, if you are in the Chicago tech scene, you know this. These events I go to are a gold mine of insiration to share thoughts, opinions, conversations, and ideas. The way forward is easy in hindsight. I am going to write about all these events I go to. I am going to be honest, sometimes concise; sometimes verbose. I also think some others may find what I write to be helpful as they try to navigate the Chicago tech ecosystem themselves. As you may know, I run the Chicago Mail User Group, an email focused mailing list for those interested in email tech, and it has also secondarily become a place for others to share events to each other in a nice private space. It does not have a public archive, but it may be beneficial to synthesize some of the threads there into a write up as well.

All of this leads into a broader goal: to write reactive to all the things I already am doing. This could be things I am reading or have read, or conversations I have had, or really any experience worth chronicling. I hope this type of content will be more engaging for myself and others. It would be nice, because people could ask me about what I think of XYZ thing happening and I could be like “read here my good friend!” The goal is to get more people reading, writing, and engaging, not for a platform, but rather for a community and for themselves. As always you can email me your thoughts. Try www @ robert ismo . com .