My (awesome) co-worker Hannah Frankman had an awesome tweet where she talked about things you read having an actual impact on your life. I replied that I think a lot of knowledge is incremental, and builds you as a person over time rather than all at once. But maybe I’m wrong – maybe we could have more of an impact if we took action immediately on things we thought were valuable. How else will we discover what does and doesn’t have actual value?

So if it’s a book, a tweet, a magazine article, a blog, whatever. If it sounds like a good idea and you find yourself saying “Huh, I should look into that,” or “maybe I’ll consider that,” well…

Why not today?

So I started blogging instead of thinking about blogging. I did ten minutes of high-energy exercise this morning instead of thinking about designing an exercise routine. I sent emails to people I wanted to talk to instead of debating a perfect strategy.

Lots of it won’t work. Some of my blogging will be terrible. My exercise was probably laughably bad. My emails might not get responses. So what? I wouldn’t have accomplished anything if I’d just thought about it. Taking any action, even if it fails, gives me data to make the next attempt better. And even if I decide not to continue with something, there’s a world of difference between “I tried something and it didn’t work” and “I never tried.”

There used to be a really great blog aggregation program called Pulse. Very simple UI, took whatever blogs you wanted to read and lined them up in one place. No bells or whistles. Loved it. Then one day for some crazy reason, LinkedIn bought it and discontinued it. No other blog-aggregator (bloggregator?) filled the void for me.

Turns out, WordPress is actually great for this! The mobile app aggregates all the blogs’ posts in chronological order and makes them easy follow. I wouldn’t have known the answer I wanted existed if I didn’t start blogging.

Man, learning stuff is awesome.

I’m not a prolific blogger. We’re doing this to learn. Jim Varney, one of the greats of comedic cinema, had a schtick he would do when playing Ernest P. Worrell. He would ramble at the camera directly, which was playing the role of his “friend” Vern. Vern never had lines and was never seen, though it was clear from the context that he was annoyed by Ernest’s constant shenanigans. I like the idea of communication that, while consumed by an audience of many, is played out as if it were addressed to just one other person.

I think that’s the model I’m going to go for here. I’m just going to talk to you, friend. You and I, we’re going on this journey together. Thanks for coming along.

I’ve decided to blog.  Sometimes I say insightful, clever or pithy things, and there should be somewhere to capture those gems for posterity.  Sometimes I babble, and I’ll seem less insane if I’m babbling to a theoretical audience than if I’m just talking to myself.  And sometimes I just need a place to focus an uncontrollable urge to communicate.

I don’t have a plan yet.  I’ll figure it out as I go.