“Master the best that other people have ever figured out. Don’t just try to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart.” - from Derek Sivers’ notes on Petter Bevelin’s book, Seeking Wisdom.
I’m venturing into blogging the same way I got into songwriting. Great songs inspired me, changed me and moved me to act. They electrified me so much I had to have a go myself.
I subscribed to Derek Sivers’ blog years ago. His posts are brief and insightful. They take only a few minutes to read and stay with you for days, weeks, maybe longer. Derek was giving me new perspective and inspiration in small, digestible chunks. I found myself approaching things differently because I read his blog.
I found myself more excited.
Derek turned me on to other bloggers like Seth Godin, Leo Babauta and Sebastian Marshall. I subscribed to them and got more perspective.
Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with the blog format. Blogs favor frequency over length. Over time, depth is born from the frequency of the posts. Rather than trying to cram it all into one sitting, we’re slowly turned on to a blogger’s way of thinking one post at a time.
Blogs are more like episodes of a show than full-length movies. Ideas can be developed further over multiple seasons than in a single sitting.
I currently subscribe to a handful of bloggers and read them daily. Reading blogs has become a a morning ritual, a compliment to coffee. I sift through the ideas, embracing the ones that resonate and discarding the rest.
A wonderful side effect: I finally stopped trying to figure it all out for myself.
The claim has been made (by multiple bloggers) that writing publicly changes a person. This idea sunk in and stayed with me.
When we read a blogger’s ideas, it’s not necessarily the way they behave every day. It’s more like their best intentions, their dreams, who they hope to be. I believe that putting these intentions out into the world creates powerful change.
So here I am.
published .
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