There's Just Two Blogs In Me, And I Just Wrote The Third

So I started blogging in January of 2007, as part of a travelogue project, under another URL (which you can find pretty easily if you know where to look). The travelogue was an extremely successful project; I met a lot of great people through the blog, many of whom I went on to meet IRL and a few who I would now consider some of my closest friends.

After I got back from the trip, I started getting flack from trolls because I was still blogging under this travelogue URL even though I was very obviously not traveling. So I switched to another URL and started Blog #2 (lovely, I know; and again you can find it if you know where to look). Blog #2 chugged along for about a year but never felt particularly coherent; it didn't have an organizing theme the way the travelogue was organized. It was just one of those blogs about stuff I did, and movies I saw, and all of that. For a while I posted pictures of everything I cooked for myself, since I really like cooking, but it wasn't even a cooking blog.

Then I stopped blogging altogether.

And now I'm back.

Here's why.

So I have this job, which I love; and about the time I stopped blogging, I got promoted to a new position. I know I'm very lucky to have the ability to work somewhere that is, in all aspects, a great place to work, and to have a job that is both challenging and fascinating (both the original position and the one to which I was promoted).

The thing about this new position is that it is in one of those fields of Great Importance. The issues I'm working on (though "assisting with" might be a better way of putting it) are right up there with curing cancer or putting space probes on Mars. And this was right about the time that the whole Manager vs. Maker essay was making the rounds, and because I thought Paul Graham was an interesting essayist I read most of his stuff over the next few evenings, and there he was, asking these three questions:

1. What are the most important problems in your field?
   
   
2. Are you working on one of them?
   
   
3. Why not?

And then he goes on to write that anyone who wants to get anything of importance done needs to devote all their time to it (somewhere he writes "good thinkers have hobbies; great thinkers don't").

Which I did. I stopped blogging; I stopped reading anything that wasn't directly related to The Issue Of Great Importance; I stopped cooking beyond the basic "throw lentils in crockpot" needed to keep myself alive. I spent a lot of extra time at work.

And while I find the work I do fascinating, and I am eager to read the next article, I missed... other stuff. I missed the connections I was making between my work and the rest of my life; the interesting parallel threads I discovered that made both work and life better. (I also missed having a forum to shout out awesome things like I got one of the first-press CDs of The Else which included the FREE SECRET COPY of Cast Your Pod To The Wind!)

So there you go. Blog #3, theme (if any) TBD.

Also I made a fantastic spaghetti sauce today. The Farmers' Market red peppers gave it just the right amount of bite, and the three cloves of garlic made my insides feel all flushed-out and ready to start the week.

Yay.