I deleted this blog around this time last year for a few reasons. I had just broken up with a woman who read it frequently, and I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing how/what I was doing. Secondly, so many people I knew had begun reading it that I no longer felt that I could honestly write about current events from my life. Can't write about this, she'll read it; can't write about that, the people at work will see it. What can you write about if not your relationships and career?
I also wanted to do more freelance writing. I figured I'd take the time I spent on blogging and transfer it to paying sidework. I never got around to it. The sites I wanted to write for had too many rules, and paid too little for me to bother. I'm not going to spend all weekend writing about some topic I don't care about for $150.
But some things changed. For one, I no longer care who reads this. Actually, I hope a lot of people do, because I'm going to put some ads up. That leads me to item two, which is, I want to get my passive Web income back. The only way I can do that is to have some good content sites up. Since I had nearly 80 articles up on this blog, why not leverage them? I've also started a couple of other sites that I hope to monetize on purely a part-free-time basis. I don't want to spend every night and weekend creating new content or messing with site design; I just want to get a few good sites up, write when I feel like it, and get the checks from advertisers coming back in.
And lastly, I got sick of Clark Kent Mode. You know how in Superman II, when Superman gives up his powers, he immediately runs into a bunch of problems that he isn't used to? Leaving journalism was very much like going into Clark Kent Mode. I no longer had media superpowers. I couldn't get into places for free anymore, I couldn't have access to pre-release computer hardware, I had no influence. I was like Henry Hill at the end of Goodfellas -- I had to wait in line like a regular civilian. Having a blog was a way of holding onto some of my old powers. Last year I gave it up completely and wanted to step into the shadows for a while. I did, and now I've decided to pick up where I left off. I still have to watch what I say here because it's in print and it's in public, but I think that's probably a good thing.
This time around I've disabled the comment feature. Aside from avoiding a lot of potential security problems, disabling comments also enables me to avoid interacting with morons and spammers. If you want to say something, print it on your own site and link back to my article.
