So this morning, I was lying in bed relaxing, and reading RSS feeds on my phone. I got to Wil Wheaton’s excellent blog, and thought as I was lying there “I really enjoy his stories; it’s like a little window into his head and his life”. And that’s what a blog is for, really, at least for me anyway. Most of my favorite blogs (and podcasts, for that matter) are really personal, “internal voice of the author” type things. And then I realized…that’s what I need to do with my blog. Heck, anyone who knows me knows that when I tell a story…well, I can ramble a bit. OK, a lot. But here on my blog, I’ve got nothing but time, and it’s my own space. So thanks, Wil, for reminding me what this darn thing’s for. And thanks to WordPress for the fullscreen edit mode they put in a few versions back; I’m using it now, and it’s nice. Keeps the distractions to a minimum.

I’ve been wanting to get back to the blog anyway; my friend Dave Slusher has been working with a software stack that does some cool integration with social media sites like Facebook and Google+. With it, not only can your posts on your blog appear as direct posts on those site (rather than you putting a link that people have to click through to read), but the interactions (likes, comments) on those sites are synchronized back to your original blog post. Very slick, and a great way to own your words, as Jon Udell likes to say.

(Opened a new tab here to track down the link for Jon’s post, but stopped myself. I’m doing a little markup to denote where I want to put hyperlinks later, but otherwise this is just straight typing. No stopping and ending up down the rabbit hole of clickthroughs somewhere…)

Anyway. I was lying in bed late this morning because I’ve taken enough Wednesdays and Thursdays off through the rest of the year that I’m not heading back to Atlanta until January. It’s combination of vacation days and holidays, because 2014 cooperated and made both Christmas and New Year’s a Thursday this year. (Honestly, I had more than enough vacation left that it would have worked regardless, but this makes it easier). I really enjoy my job, and especially the people I work with…but it’s been a stressful year, and there are not as many of those people working with me anymore as there were a few months back. (Google “Turner 2020” for background, if you like). There are changes still coming, and I’d honestly like some time to rest and recharge before tackling all of them. Trying to stay positive, expect the best, and as my boss said a few weeks back, “whatever happens, we’re going to have fun”. He’s the best.

I’ve got some projects tentatively planned for this holiday/vacation time; working up the blog/social media integration stack that Dave is using is one of them, and another is a way to push my soma.fm listening to my last.fm profile. I headed back to my roots a few weeks ago, and set up Debian as a dual-boot option on one of my laptops, so I’ve got an excellent setup for both projects (I’m probably going to use Google App Engine for the soma hack). It’s been several years since I’ve regularly run Linux on anything but an embedded device (Raspberry Pi) or in a VM. It feels good to watch it boot up on the bare metal again.

So I got up, poured a giant World of Warcraft coffee mug full of joe, and plopped down here to do some typing. Once again, I’m coming back to my personal domain and planting my flag here; that feels good too. I’m taking a lot of inspiration from Wil, actually, and I really appreciate his example. Not that I’m fooling myself or anything…he’s an actual author and creator; I’m a casual blogger and very casual podcaster. But a personal voice is a personal voice, and mine lives here.

I think I’m even going to go all crazy and shoot for a podcast today as well! My H1 is sitting out on my desk, and has been there for several days, but I’ve just not quite “gotten around to it”. I’ll probably hit a lot of the same points with the podcast, but that’s fine; it’s not like there’s a giant audience for either one, and anyone that subscribes to both is probably a personal friend.

Let’s post this thing!

(UPDATE: I did a good job of focusing while actually writing the post, but boy, did I lose it while rustling up my links! Heck, I ended up creating an account at a new site (Known), after noticing that Jon Udell was experimenting with it. *sigh* Focus, Ken…focus.)