In an age where attention span is short and activity is impermanent, it is encouraging to hear about people, like Anil Dash, who have had staying power with their blogs:
15 Lessons from 15 Years of Blogging. The following are ones I resonate most with:
Always write with the idea that what you're sharing will live for months and years and decades. Having a long-term perspective in mind is an incredibly effective tool for figuring out whether a topic is meaningful or not, and for encouraging a kinder, more thoughtful perspective.
Always write for the moment you're in. Being true to how you feel and what you're experiencing is both more effective in connecting with a reader and more personally useful for when you revisit your work, serving as a reminder of exactly where you were at the time.
The personal blog is an important, under-respected art form. While blogs as a medium are basically just the default format for sharing timely information or doing simple publishing online, the personal blog is every bit as important an expressive medium as the novel or the zine or any visual arts medium. As a culture, we don't afford them the same respect, but it's an art form that has meant as much to me, and revealed as many truths to me, as the films I have seen and the books I have read, and I'm so thankful for that.
Whether it's a business journal or your own diary, a blog ought to have some degree of
personal in it. By this I mean essentially what Dash means: What you write ought to be honest but kindly, authentic but respectful. This may sound like a tall order, and in fact it is. But if you
love blogging and you deign to blog for a long time, then you must set the bar high and reach it yourself.
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