Sorry, haven’t been blogging for a bit. Holidays have been rather busy!
Anyway, I’ve been taking some time to think about the direction for this experiment I call a blog. When I started it about two years ago, I did so mostly to experience what blogging was about. I wasn’t clear what I wanted to blog about, but often in life it’s about discovering the why that’s the interesting endeavor.
One thing I’ve discovered is that disjoint categories makes for a difficult blog to read. Some folks have commented that it’s not clear if my blog is about search, cycling, or my random ramblings. And while I’m sure there are a few people out there that have a 90% overlap with my interests, turns out most don’t share the same criteria — thus the search folks get bothered by lots of cycling stuff, and the cycling folk get random search stuff. Thus I’ve made a few sub-feeds for category-specific feeds that will hopefully make things easier on those readers.
Another thing I’ve discovered is the very awkward line in terms of blogging about your industry. When you go through grad school, you’re taught to think critically about nearly everything. It’s not so much a hard habit to break, but rather it’s difficult to catch yourself when you’re being overly critical. Furthermore, critical discussion usually involves controversy, which implies differing, usually opposing, points of view. It’s often not clear whether those discussions should take place within the confines of a company, or in a public forum. And it’s not clear that even if those discussions should be public, whether random bloggers should be the ones having that discussion!
So, what will the coming year bring? Unclear… but again, it’s never so much the ending as the journey. I hope you’ll enjoy joining me on this one!