Blog Shift

The one-year anniversary of this blog may have passed without public comment (Apr. 18), but in my head, the wheels were churning.

After some thought, I’ve decided to keep this blog, Safe Digression, focused on my personal life — that includes music, rambles around town, The Project, etc. All of my professional-y posts about social media, online communications and the like will now be housed at georgycohen.com [RSS feed].

This past year of blogging has been a lot of fun, and I’m excited for this change. Increasingly, I was feeling like I was stepping on the toes of one readership by publishing something clearly geared for another. This change gives both my personal and professional life room to breathe online.

And of course, don’t forget about my pet project Georgy to Go, the mobile photolog (and Posterous love affair) that just won’t quit.

I’ve still got some home decorating to finish over on my other blog (weird to say), but stop by and have a look around!

Photo by hansol/Flickr Creative Commons

The Importance of Story in My Life

When Chris Brogan offered up a free copy of a really cool sounding book by Donald Miller to folks who blog about “the importance of story in my life,” I decided to give it a shot.

I’ve had a lot of crazy things happen to me in my thirty years — recovering long-lost fathers, discovering long-lost twin brothers, meeting buckets of family members I could never have imagined existed, growing up under circumstances that were trying and unique — and I think about them a lot. I write about them a lot. There are many incredible stories to tell and remember.

But when I write or think “about them,” it sets the “them” apart from “me.” Sure, life is happening to me. But I am happening to life. As amazing and bewildering as all of these new family members are to me, I may be similarly bewildering and amazing to them. It’s somewhat humbling to realize that.

In my line of work, I fancy myself a storyteller. Whether the medium is a news article, a photo gallery or even web copy, I am trying to tell a story, be it magical or mundane. But it’s important to remember that somewhere, someone is telling a story about you. You are someone else’s story. In fact, there is no “my story” and “your story.” We are all happening to each other. There is just one story.

So, with that in mind, the importance of story in my life is that it is a framework for understanding not only the world around me and the things that happen to me, but myself and the things that I do. It places myself in a larger context, and it reminds me that the story is mine in part to tell, to read, to shape, to inform. And that’s a big responsibility, as well as a tremendous thrill.

Photo by umjanedoan/Flickr Creative Commons

Recipe for Weak Sauce

I’ve been doing some blogger self-examination, and I’ve come to the conclusion that lately, I’ve been hawking some weak sauce. For future reference, I’ve compiled the recipe here. Appropriately, I’ve broken it out into 5 Fs…:

• Faking it to make it. Sometimes, when you walk into the temple, it’s easy to get blinded by the idols and forget your own religion. Meaning, if you spend all day reading (and perhaps being intimidated by) the wisdom and insights of Chris Brogan and Christopher Penn, it might be easy to feel that you should be more like them. Not true. They’re them. You’re you. I’m me. And that’s all we can be. Speaking of that…
• Forgetting your roots. At the beginning of the year, everyone was talking about their “three words” to which they would tie their goals and actions for the year. I feel like a blog should have three words, too. With what purpose did we set on this blogging course, and what are the stars that guide us? Lately, I feel like I’ve neglected some of the subjects that, when I started this blog nearly a year ago, made blogging really exciting for me. I realized, while strolling the Commonwealth Mall on Saturday, that it had been a long time since I had blogged about my own urban tourism. And while pecking away at The Project, I realized I hadn’t blogged through any of my thoughts or ideas on that topic in a while.
• Forcing it. Per my earlier post about not publishing just because the shiny blue button lets you, only a well thought out post should see the light of day. I’m usually pretty good at this — lots of drafts never make it to prime time, some after hours of hacking away reveal the seed of an idea just can’t quite become a flowering plant — but sometimes, the shiny blueness gets the best of me.
• Falling in love with your own words. The toughest thing about being a blogger is being your own editor. At first blush, we adore our ideas and fawn over our wordcraft. But independent bloggers have a responsibility to police and challenge themselves. Sometimes, that’s like ratting on your spouse.  When it comes to writing, though, true love is tough love.
• Flying blind. One of the great things about blogging is the potential for spontaneous pontification or response. But that doesn’t replace the need to have a plan in place. Call it an editorial calendar, call it a half-dozen drafts in WordPress, whatever works for you. But at least having the general framework of a schedule and a structure around your blogging can help alleviate the anxiety sometimes causes by the blank editing pane or the increasingly distant date of your last post.

I don’t lay this all out by way of a giant mea culpa or as a self-flagellatory exercise. But as I was thinking through how I might improve my blogging, I thought others might find these reminders helpful.

What helps you keep your blog on track?

Photo by Creative_Tools, Flickr/Creative Commons

Some Special Guest Appearances

Things have been a little quiet over here, but fear not — good works have been afoot. Just, well, not here. Where have I been?

- I’ve been working on a collaborative Top 100 Albums of the Decade project with some of my colleagues across the world of higher ed web communications. The first installment launches today, and updates will be posted each day until we’ve tallied our collective top 100. I have my own top 100 list, which I will share in a little bit. Thanks to Andrew Careaga for organizing this awesome experience, and thanks also to my partners-in-crime: Stephen Biernacki, Ron Bronson, Mason Dyer, Tim Nekritz and Holly Rae. I hope you enjoy the product of our collective dorky brain.

- I also contributed a short video clip to a blog post by Seth Odell, a new blogger on the higher ed scene who is making a splash with his big yet doable ideas. The blog post shows off the power of the YouTube annotations functionality. You have to watch — and participate — to see for yourself.

Coming up soon in this space? My top 10 albums of 2009, plus my own top 100 albums of the decade. Stay tuned!

A Dispatch from the Early Hours

Earlier this year, I bumped my wake-up time up by 45 minutes. I did this because I realized I needed to find more time in my life to do all the things I wanted to do, and since the day wasn’t about to sprout extra hours, I needed to recover them from somewhere.

I thought it would be difficult, but since I am a morning person already, I adjusted to the early wake up time fairly well. Typically, if I don’t hit snooze too much, I am at my computer with my cereal and banana by 6AM, WERS on the radio. I give myself a half hour to eat and catch up on the internet. Then, it’s either time to write or go for a run. (I wrote about this a bit on my three-month blogaversary.) It’s worked out great. I can relax, get stuff done — writing or fitness — and usually still afford to walk to work (a 45-minute endeavor) if the weather is good.

The advantage I had in starting this when I did, of course, is that in the spring, each day brings a minute or more of additional sunlight than the day before it. The dawn gets earlier, the sunset gets later, our days are increasingly enriched by daylight.

By the equinox, we enjoy such an embarrassment of daylight riches that we barely notice as those minutes begin slipping away, until one day we’re standing at the bus stop after work, not too late, and we notice the sun almost dipping below the western horizon. Then we remember the hole in our pocket that let those minutes of sunlight slip away the whole time, unbeknownst to us.

Lately, at 6:30AM, it’s still practically pitch dark — not exactly enticing weather to go out running around Somerville. So I’ve taken to running from my office after work, around 5PM. But after this weekend, when Daylight Saving Time ends, it’ll be pitch black at that time, too. But then, if my calculations are right, 6:30AM should be well lit enough to encourage me to step out of doors for running again. What a yo-yo.

Then there’s the writing. Lately, work has picked up, and I’ve been doing more e-mail-checking and task-completion here at the home office. I am trying to sanctify this early morning time, but it’s easy to see it as a great time to knock items off the ol’ to-do list. And that’s an even more tempting diversion when you’re at a crossroads with your main project, unsure how to proceed.

So, what does all of this mean? It means that no matter how you schedule your life or attempt to reclaim your time, forces outside of your control — be they astronomical or mundane — will intervene. No matter what plan you put into place, you have to be willing to adjust if you’re still committed to your goals. And if your goals seem insurmountable, you’ve just got to find some way of chipping away at them, in whatever space you can find to do so.

Here in these early hours, it’s easy to become pensive. I’m awake a long while before my husband and many of my friends, and the world around me is dark and still, so it’s a very solitary time. I hate overhead light, so I prefer to sit in the dark by the glow of the monitor until the natural light begins to filter through my window, gradually illuminating my space. But if there is one abiding advantage of waking up this early, it is regularly seeing the sunrise out my kitchen window. The picture above was taken this morning. Sure, it ain’t over the Atlantic Ocean, but for a view from Winter Hill, it’s not too shabby at all. And while the amount of time we get to see it each day is ever-changing, the sun always comes. Everything else may change, but you can always can count on that.

My Three-Month Blogaversary

Saturday will be the three-month anniversary of this blog. With this post, I creep above 40,000 words written in this space during that time, over the span of more than 60 posts. I am also bumping up against 4,000 views since launch. Sounds great, right? Well, believe it or not, I am somewhat ambivalent about this accomplishment.

When I wrote the About page for this blog, I paused when thinking of how to describe what exactly I was trying to do here. I ended up using the vague term “personal writing project,” which may look like it means nothing, but it actually means a lot of things.

I have a Livejournal that I’ve kept for seven or so years (it’s easy to find but impossible to read, muahahaha). My activity there had dwindled over the past year or so, probably owing to Facebook and Twitter and a host of other distractions, including writing features for the Boston Phoenix. Back in February, I decided to port my Twitter updates over to LJ, and the reaction was vehemently negative. LJ should be for LJ, the prevailing sentiment declared. Leave Twitter over there.

About a week later, I wrote a thoughtful post about appreciating my non-hip neighborhood in Somerville (which I republished here by request, since it’s friends-locked now on LJ) and got a lot of positive feedback, summed up by my friend Joey who said, “That was a very nice tale and a reason why you shouldn’t give up on LJ.”

The next day, someone anonymously gifted me with 12 months of paid LJ account time. This is a $20-some investment, no small shakes. I still don’t know who it was, but I owe them big time. It jolted me into realizing that This Was Important.

That whole chain of events came during a relatively crappy time, when things on all fronts of my life were at varying stages of chaos, panic or transition. The Twitter Backlash of ought-nine reminded me about the one thing in life I have to hold onto no matter what: writing. Nothing can take that away. I’m good at it, and people like reading what I write. And I should give myself the space to let it happen — on a personal level moreso than freelance. For my own sake, if nothing else.

But, as I began recommitting to my personal writing, there were other factors in play, as well. Mainly, there was the developing story of my family — both my most recently acquired family in England and the family I am gradually rediscovering here in the states, families that my brother and I have been getting to know in one way or another over the past seven years, since we started getting to know each other. Our upcoming trip to Florida and West Virginia is another chapter in that story. I’ve known for a long time that I was going to need to write this story, to try to figure out what it all means and share it. I realized in April, after returning from my most recent trip to England, that it was time to get serious about this. But to get serious, I needed to find time in my life to commit to writing, and I needed a mechanism for holding me accountable.

That’s when I decided to start a blog. I wanted to keep LJ as a space for more personal musings among friends. The purposes of this blog were to get me back in the practice of personal essay writing; to get me used to writing about my life in a public platform; to try out ideas and share snippets and vignettes from this broader writing endeavor.

For a long time, a quote by Anne Lamott that I had cut out of the newspaper was taped to my computer monitor: “You just sit down and write everyday for three or four hours. You do it like piano scales until you have a story to tell.” Well, I didn’t have three or four hours a day, but I did realize I needed to make time in my life in order to make this goal a reality. So, I start setting my alarm 45 minutes earlier each morning, giving myself just two options: write or run. This has worked out remarkably well. Most of my blogging gets done in the mornings before work. (And sometimes, I actually run!)

As far as the piano scales part goes, some of my blog entries have been about my family (the ones self-importantly tagged “The Project”), but I’ve also written about the Boston Globe, music, various things in Somerville and topics ranging from relationships to swine flu to the merits of iTunes vs. Amazon MP3. I am of two minds about this. In one regard, any writing is worthwhile writing — any writing is writing I wasn’t doing before. But in another sense, am I getting distracted from what I should be writing about? As I look at the numbers with which I led off this post — particularly the 40,000 words one — I can’t help but think, did I spent 40,000 words writing about the union woes at the Globe when I could have been working on The Project?

Maybe there is no “should” or “could.” Maybe there is only “write.” After all, you can’t write your symphonies unless you do your major scales, or something. (There’s a reason I quit piano lessons.) These 40,000 words would not have been written had I not started this blog, and without them I would not have gleaned the lessons I have about presenting a well-reasoned argument; writing with purpose and not for the sake of filling space; not being afraid of putting personal information and reflection out into the public sphere; diligence and discipline that, surprisingly, are needed even to do something you love and need to do to survive.

That said, I know I have a large task ahead of me, and I won’t lie and say it’s not scary. It’s scary, alright. It’s not only a test of my abilities, but of my fortitude in confronting a life — the parts of it both known and unknown — and trying to make sense of it. Skeletons, closets, etc. But there’s no turning back now.

I recently taped another quote to my wall, this time by Michael Chabon:

“It seems kind of magical and mysterious,” he says, but in the end, writing is a job.

“You sit down in your chair and you put in the time until you get 500 words or 1,000 words or whatever your personal target is. … It’s a habit and it’s an occupation. Inspiration really plays a minor role.”

This quote may seem kind of deflating, but it actually helps me. I don’t want writing to be magical and mysterious. I have a goal. I have things I need to do. And I need to sit in this chair and do them.

Here’s hoping that the next 40,000 words of this blog bring me closer to telling the story I need to tell. I may still write about the Globe or my latest musical obsessions, but I know I need to focus more on the bigger goal. So I’ll keep on trucking. Note by note, word by word. Until the story is told.

Debut

So, when confronted with the trick of balancing Twitter, Facebook and Livejournal, I of course decided a good solution would be to add a fourth medium to the mix. Hence, a blog.

I haven’t kept a blog in years (and no, I don’t count Livejournal — I fancy that to be more of a shared diary than a blog). Truth be told, I’m sort of looking forward to it. In this day and age, it’s not an insignificant challenge to figure out how to balance out the different dimensions of your online identity. And I think I may have it figured out. The operative word being “may.”

I also need an additional writing outlet. I have a major personal writing project I’m on the verge of launching, and I thought a blog might be a good scratch pad, of sorts: a place to flex the old writing brain on various topics. 

Ultimately, one of my long-term goals needs to be to overcome my startup syndrome, whereby I get really excited about something for six months before walking away from it. I am hoping this blog becomes an ongoing project and not a fleeting one.

Of course, if The Project picks up steam and this blog has to make the ultimate sacrifice, then that’s totally fine. The Project is more than worth it.