Kathleen McGivney

The illusion of silence

I've always been a sporadically prolific blogger. I've gone through periods of time where I've blogged daily, but that usually only lasts a few days in a row. Every once in a while I'll blog more than once in a day, which is usually when I'm feeling particularly wordy. More often than not, and of course most recently, I haven't blogged much at all, which makes it appear as though I've gone silent. This, however, is just an illusion. For example, during the time period between my last blog post and this one, I have tweeted approximately 180 times. I've also typed thousands and thousands of words into Skype, AIM, IRC and Signals, our internal microblogging product. I'm not silent at all. So why the blog silence?

I suppose it's because I no longer use my blog as an outlet for small ideas and comments - I use Twitter for that. I don't use it to bitch about my day - I use the group chats I have with my friends on Skype for that. I don't use it to share hilarious links with my friends - I use Twitter or AIM for that. I don't use it to talk about work - I use Signals for that, and this particular blog (unlike several past blog iterations) is my personal blog, on which I rarely discuss work anyway. It's not that I'm lacking inspiration or topics, just that I either have other outlets for them or I don't have the time or inclination to flesh them out into longer posts.

This isn't a problem that's new to blogging - in fact, when I first started blogging, after the initial honeymoon period of realizing that I had my very own self-publishing platform on which I did not have to censor myself or cater to anyone else's approval, my posting frequency was erratic at best, and I know that many other bloggers run into the same issue. I have no solution to this problem (and I don't really know if it's even a problem!), so I need some ideas.

So what motivates you? What gets you to flesh out tweets into posts, or take that idea you talked about with your friend via instant messenger into a full-on blog post? What keeps you posting often, and more importantly, what do you do when you hit a dry spell and can't come up with anything to blog about?

Domain names, redirects, and Moo cards, oh my

After blogging at my own domain for so long, blogging on TypePad, a hosted service, took a little bit of getting used to. I'm all settled in now, but to complete everything, I bought a bunch of domain names that I can't believe I didn't have already - kmcgivney.com, .net, and .org, which redirect here, and kathleenmcgivney.com, .net. and .org, which don't yet, because I might put a photography portfolio up there. Don't hold your breath, though, because between designing my husband's website, putting together our wedding photo books to send to family, and doing a little prep work for some upcoming adventures, I don't have the time to do much more than redirect the URLs. Any volunteers for free website design will be happily accepted, as long as you don't use like, FrontPage or something.

Part of my reasoning for doing this is that kmcgivney.com is way easier to remember than kmcgivney.typepad.com when I'm telling someone about my blog. Of course, now I'll have to change the backs of my Moo cards when I order the next batch, because they all have the TypePad address on them, but that's no big deal, since they are dirt cheap - $20 for 100 mini cards. I use them to hand out if I'm taking a photo of someone on the street, or just for non-work-related contacts - if I am hanging out with Tim Gunn, I do not need to give him an IBM business card. I'd rather give him one that shows my creative side, and that's what I get with the Moo cards. Plus, they're easy and fast to create (bonus! see: lack of time, above), good quality, and I got them very fast, considering they're coming from the UK. I also ordered some stickers and postcards with my photos on them, and I like the quality - and now have fewer excuses for not sending my mother anything in the mail. A picture on a postcard is worth a thousand words, mom!

Another day, another blog

Yes, I've started yet another weblog. The two and a half of you who still read my other blog and blogs I write for may be asking yourselves, "Self, why would Kathleen start another blog when she so infrequently updates the ones she already has?" Well, I'll tell you, so that you no longer have to talk to yourself. It makes people think you're not quite right in the head.

I am starting this blog for a few reasons. First, though I have a blog at KMnow that I don't update very often (unless, of course, I'm liveblogging a conference or something), I don't want to use it for blogging about my personal life. I don't have an issue putting some aspects of my personal life on display for all of the interwebs to see, obviously, but I'd prefer to keep the work/geek and life topics on separate blogs.

Second, though I LOVE Domino for many things, including blogging, I find it somewhat limiting for the type of blogging I like to do - mobile, on the move, and not tied to a particular client. I am probably making a giant ass out of myself because I'm sure that there are capabilities in one or another of the Domino blog templates to e-mail posts and photos to the blog, blog from my mobile phone's browser, etc. (and if there are, feel free to yell at me for being a bad Domino blogger in the comments). TypePad/MT allows me to e-mail photos and posts directly to the blog and automatically post them while I'm on the road - which will make it far easier for me to post much more frequently. I come up with ideas for blog posts all the time, but many times (like now, while I'm on holiday in Italy) I don't have access to a Notes client and so I can't blog what I want to, when I want to.

Third, I have some collaborative personal web projects on the horizon with people who are not Notes/Domino people. I know, I know! What am I doing associating with people who don't share the same obsession with the product I work with? You'd think I have a life outside of work or something. Anyway, working with a web-based tool that they are already familiar with reduces the ramp-up time for those projects and lets us get to creating awesome content already.

So, keep an eye out here for Lotus-related topics, here for NYC-related topics, and here (that's this blog) for everything else, including lots of photos. You can also view my photos at Flickr and keep up with me on Twitter. And there you have it.