I’d like to write a professional blog someday, too. Seriously.

While I do agree that there are some possibilities there I have some issues with it. I would call my issues ethical ones although others would never consider them such.

My concerns, though, include the authors admitted inability to get things done on time. He claims those deadlines are all flexible. But that’s crap! Maybe he’s been a professor too long and not had any real responsibilities in the world. Sometimes deadlines are soft, but not meeting one’s commitments often has huge ramifications on others. But he’s more than willingly to blithely ignore the fallout on others.

The second is highly related and goes to his comments on ordering books for his classes: “I can get mine in mid-Summer and things will be fine. I just need to order popular well-known books from efficient publishers.”

As a student, I highly resent this attitude!! It directly affects students in multiple ways. As efficient as those publishers are this still causes issues for the bookstore staff and any, heaven forbid, proactive students. And I’m just supposed to assume that “popular well-known” equates to quality. Well, call me a bad consumer but I ain’t buying that.

Thanks for pointing out the article, though. As I said, I do think there are some valuable ideas in it; just not the ones about blithely missing deadlines as if that will affect no one else in the world.

On a completely unrelated note: I don’t know if you read xkcd.com (webcomic), and if you don’t, you should. This one reminded me of you: http://xkcd.com/353/
Hope it makes you laugh.

Hi, John. Thanks for the vote of confidence. I love your stuff, too.

My point is only that there are multiple ways to blog. I’m glad lots of people have missions and perhaps even a well-defined topic. Makes life much simpler if I like what they write and they make the topic interesting. [Like, John.]

I often read blogs for a good while that aren’t about anything I’m really interested in, but the author gives it life.

I accept the first principle, but much more widely.

And I wholeheartedly accept the 2nd point. Again, lots of ways to “draw sketches” is all I’m saying.

The thing I’m “feeling guilty” about, for lack of a better concept, is entirely a sense of letting myself down.

Assumptions:

If more of the things I read were read slowly I would get more out of what I read. [Think John has to accept this one with minimal caveats, perhaps]

If I read more things slowly, I would get less overall read [say in page count. So? The resulting benefits of closer reading of less but more than now might be more than enough to offset any "loss" of an easy "objective" measure. / Pretty much a given overall, though.]

If I wrote slowly my writing would probably benefit. [Much more of an assumption.]

I could funnel the improved reading into the improved writing, ergo …

Something. What? Different. Yes.

One possible offset for the lack of reading quantity is if one is good to better at finding the good stuff first. [I seem to have an odd knack for this, in many domains, so ....]

I like John’s view(s) of the blogging world and I’d like to think that I may well have a blog with a set end date someday.

Heck, I would have loved to do a CommentPress version of the newest LC Working Group report. Talk about an end date.

There’s still some stuff I’m considering with CommentPress for other projects. But that’s one of those “round-tu-it” things.

That, and the other line I wrote there, that a blog is just sketchpad for ideas. It’s one of the reasons I like to include the odd (badly done) sketch in my blog. It sends a message, “Hey folks, caution, work in progress here, could be sticking my foot in my mouth here.”

Take care.