{"id":709,"date":"2007-01-20T16:59:22-05:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-20T21:59:22+00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/2007\/01\/20\/its-your-thing-do-what-you-wanna-do\/"},"modified":"2007-01-20T17:00:53-05:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-20T22:00:53+00:00","slug":"its-your-thing-do-what-you-wanna-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/2007\/01\/20\/its-your-thing-do-what-you-wanna-do\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s your thing, do what you wanna do"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started writing this as a comment on Matt’s dos and don’ts<\/q> for webloggers<\/a>, but I think this is a better place for it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The rules Matt writes about apparently (lol<\/abbr>) work for his blog and personality and reading habits. However, as regarded long-time blogger Rebecca Blood<\/a> writes in her essay on the history of weblogs<\/a>, The original weblogs were link-driven sites. Each was a […] particular mixture of links, commentary, and personal observation unique to each individual site [which] has always given each weblog its distinctive voice and personality.<\/q><\/p>\r\n\r\n

My particular mixture<\/q> is my own, but it’s influenced by what, and how, I read. On my blogroll are a lot of blogs that are little more than the occasional essay interspersed into an extended link dump, many others that are comprised of short commentaries on a link or two, and a few that are basically personal journals. And when I do one of my occasional prunings, those are among the first to go. The ones that I keep are made up of a mixture of different topics, lengths and styles. I have no idea or care about the frequency at which the writers post, because I’m subscribed to a large enough number of them that there’s always something new and interesting for me to read.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

I joke from time to time about my “audience of none”, but it’s because that’s all I expect. Just because I write something doesn’t mean people are forced to read it, whether it’s at work—where I’d been blogging, unregarded and mostly unnoticed, for four and a half years before others started last month—or on my own site. If people find some value (whatever that may be) in what I write, when I write it, they’ll read it and maybe even come back; if they don’t, they won’t.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

So here’s my own personal list of blogging dos and don’ts:<\/p>\r\n\r\n