Blah Blah Blogging

It's time to review labels again.

Label #16 (3 Way Tie) Blah Blah Blogging.

This blog has not been immune, at times, to instead of blogging about home schooling or crazy family members or first place baseball teams, to occasionally just blog about blogging. This label nostalgia is a pretty good example. Last weekend when I posted that I had not posted for awhile is another.

Over the 20 months Home School Dad has been the blog sensation sweeping the nation I have made a few observations about blogging. I'd like to share a few here.

1) You could always spend more time blogging. Early on I became overwhelmed with how much time I could pour into the blog-o-sphere. But no matter how much you spend, it seems like you could always spend more. Not letting blogging consume me was a hard calf to corral the first 6-8 months. It is now pretty easy to not get swept up out of control. This balance was hard to come by but it is certainly something I will want to pass on to the blogging class I teach this fall.

2) Some ideas just don't work. I sometimes get an awesome idea for a post. Sometimes it's just an excellent title. Often times, these ideas and titles pretty much write themselves into epic blog posts. Other times, no matter how hard I try, I just can't bring the idea home. This is where my wife/editor is so helpful. She'll read it and say "I have no idea where you are going with this." Sometimes I can salvage the idea, but every once in a while that dog will just not hunt. When that is the case, the best strategy is just to let the idea go.


3) Some ideas aren't worth the work. In my first few months of blogging, I used to look back at my previous months worth of posts, choose the 5 I liked best and put them in a box in my blog called Dave's fave five. This became an incredibly arduous process. First of all, it was sometimes hard to choose the 5 best because I thought everything was great. Other months I thought nothing was any good. It usually depended on whether I had a nap or not. Then after I decided on the 5, I had to link them and label them and mark them with D and put them in a blog for David and me. By the time I got it all done it was about time to do the thing over again. Part of running an effective blog is to know when to go the extra mile and when to pull the plug. A number of months ago I scrubbed all references to Dave's fave five and I've never looked back.



So from time to time I am going to still blog about blogging, but like they say at the Porcupine Salesmen Convention: Don't ignore what got you here, porcupines and more porcupines! And my porcupines are definitely home schooling and being crazy. Two porcupines that I know a lot about.



Next Time: In Praise of Allen Levi.