Month: July 2012

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The 7 reasons I didn’t post it

We all have blog posts we haven’t written. Boris Mann wrote about why he hasn’t posted some.

Here are the top 7 reasons I haven’t published some of the blog posts I’ve written.

  1. Half baked. My idea was half baked. A lot of times I find myself blogging about things I’m still trying to work out. Perhaps those half baked blog posts would spark interesting conversations but I often find myself saving them as drafts and starting a conversation in email or in person. These are the ones I think maybe I should publish.
  2. Twitter. I tweeted it instead. Many things are only worth a tweet these days. When I first started blogging in 2004, I used to blog interesting links. Now I tweet them instead.
  3. Too personal. Often I realize I need to talk directly to the person, not blog about them. Many times I want to blog when I’m frustrated about a person or a situation. In those cases, I usually just write the post, save it as a draft, and then call or email the person I’m frustrated with.
  4. Too rude. The person I was blogging about would know it was about them. I actually keep a list of the funny things I want to tweet or blog about but I need to wait a few months so that the subject doesn’t know it was them … these are usually the really funny ones. Although often they are tweets, not blog posts. And no, that tweet was not about you! 🙂
  5. Too private. I used to blog a lot more about my kids and my personal life. After some really negative comments on a post about my kids, I decided to make most of these private. I still tweet about the funny things they do and blog about some of the insights they give me, but most of my posts about my family are now private.
  6. Time. I have lots of really good topics I’d like to blog about. In many cases, I’ve started the post. I just haven’t taken the time to polish it and publish it.
  7. Not mine. I find this the most frustrating one. Often there’s a really good opinion, idea or a news item that I think should be shared but it’s not really mine to share. I’ve often offered to interview or guest post for someone but they rarely take me up on it.

Take a look at the draft posts you have. What are the top reasons you haven’t posted them?

Do you think I should post more of the above topics? How would you suggest I do that?

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What do you mean when you say “Write it down?”

I had this misunderstanding with my 5 year old about taking notes and looking them up.

“Mom, how old was I when I said my first word?”

“I don’t remember, but I wrote it down, so I can look it up.”

“Why?”

“Why did I write it down? Because I knew you might want to know some day.”

A few seconds later. “How old was I?”

“I don’t know. I’ll look it up.”

A pause. A pointed look at my phone. “How old was I when I said my first word?”

“I don’t know! I wrote it down. I’ll look it up for you when we get home.”

Another pause. Another look at the phone. “Is it stuck in the computer?”

Ah! “No, I wrote it down with a pen. On a piece of paper in a notebook. I have to find the notebook. I’ll find it when we get home.”

So what do you mean when you say you “wrote it down?” Five years ago, I meant I wrote it in a notebook with a pen. Today it means I noted it down some where in the cloud. Or perhaps I put just on my computer and it’s “stuck” there.