A very smart blog about the various forms of self-delusion.

As some of you might know, this blog used to be hosted on Wordpress.com.  If you have functioning eyeballs, you should be able to tell that I am no longer on Wordpress, but instead Posterous, my new blogging platform of choice.  (See the little yellow Posterous ribbon up top?)  Or perhaps I'm being a presumptuous jerk: for all I know, this new look-and-feel could easily be perceived as a mere theme change.

But, it isn't.

I chose Posterous for one simple reason: it's easier to post here than anywhere else. I'm typing this post in my Gmail client, but it could just as easily be my work Outlook client or even my iPhone's mail.app.  Posting by email is killer functionality, and it eliminates the static friction of composing a post but having to open up a web blogging client or an external app (my favorite: MarsEdit) and peck away in that.  It removes the coding syntax I had to use to embed video.  It allows me to attach pictures to the email for publishing in the post and I get to avoid all placement issues, resizing, cropping and formatting.  It essentially nixes all the fuss about blogging and lets you focus on the content.  Posterous handles the administrative overhead: publishing, formatting, embedding, converting.

It's simple.  And it works quickly, effortlessly.

So here I am, and thanks to all who emailed me (or got me on Twitter) about the gracefulflavor.net domain being all buggered up for a while. It was, but now should be working perfectly.

All of my old posts from Wordpress.com have been imported to this blog (all 1,000+ of them), but alas, comments and categories were lost during the import frenzy.  I am about 60% done with re-tagging all of my posts (which is a mind-numbing job, let me tell you), but all of my old comments, unfortunately, are gone forever.  Wait, scratch that: I suppose if you really wanted to find something in the old comments you could hit up the old Wordpress site, but the bottom line is that the comments here on Posterous will need to start anew.

So, welcome.  Again, if you want to ever contact me outside of the comments, you can email me or chase me down on Twitter.  I'm a (fairly) reliable correspondent.

So that's the explanation of what's been going on over the past month or so.  Thanks for sticking around. 

Let's get rolling, yes?

I'll be in Arizona next week, so not sure how much I'll be able to post. 

If I'm able to post, however, it will be because I'm slowly moving over to posterous as my main blogging engine.  In fact, if you're reading this on GracefulFlavor, it's because posterous fed it here.

Eventually, the domain gracefulflavor.net might be redirected over to my posterous blog, depending on how the experiment goes.  For the time being, however, the domain will continue to point to the Wordpress site.

Posterous allows posting by email (which is how I'm writing this), which is fantastic and easier than I've ever dreamed.  Because of this, I might be able to get some blogging done next week.

Then again, I might not, depending on my schedule.

So there.  A completely circular, indecisive, non-post to tell you that I may or may not be posting much next week.  It's like recursive irony, only lamer.

I've not posted for 10 says, as some people are not-so-gently reminding me. I'm told this is the longest time I've ever gone without a post. I'm also told I have pushy friends. So instead of just suddenly starting to post like a madman and getting back into the groove, I'll start by saying: I suck. Apologies. I've been empty and barren. Things have been really busy lately on a personal and work level, and I need to start carving the time out to get back to what I really like to do to relax, which is sit here pounding away in MarsEdit hoping whatever I'm writing makes sense. So please accept my apologies as I get back on the horse. And quit yelling. It scares the dogs.

When I first began this place, I was obsessed about stats. I would check my hit counter several times per day, and I'd rejoice when I saw a mere 20 hit jump. I remember writing a relatively stupid, amateurish post and having it get me almost 28,000 hits in a single day because it got promoted to Digg's frontpage. I was ecstatic; I thought it meant my arrival for certain. I suppose the traffic goal is part of the novelty and learning curve when one starts to blog. If you're writing, you want to see people reading; the desire for an audience is natural and unapologetically human. But after a while -- for me, at least -- a larger charter appeared.

I would like to take a moment of your time to announce something that I hope, over time, will become something rather successful.

As many of you know I write for clusterflock in addition to producing GF here.  However, I've recently started another blog, called Unfiltered, that serves as my employer's blog.  I want it to be everything most company blogs aren't: interesting, authentic, transparent, fresh, relevant, not boring.  My goal is to make it worth reading on a daily basis, even if you aren't wholly interested in the consulting business, PeopleSoft or SaaS technology.

So, if you're inclined, stop on by.  Tell others about it if you feel the prospective subject matter would be interesting.  Grok the RSS if that's your thing.  The kickoff post pretty much lays out what the blog will and will not be.

Thanks.  Have fun.  You guys rule.

In the video below, This American Life's Ira Glass talks about the value of perseverance in any creative endeavor. The progression he describes is what all content creators experience, barring freakish outliers. What first gets you into the creative game is your taste, which leads you to the art of creating. But when you first start out, your created content sort of sucks, even though it's trying to be great. But you still have your taste, which tells you, on some level, that while your stuff could be great, it isn't there yet. Over time, the delta between your taste's instinct and what you actually create diminishes, at which point your actual content has matured to be in line with your taste. Interesting stuff. The message here is one of sticking with it, often for years. Most people quit before they cross this chasm. Glass says don't quit; in fact, he suggests giving yourself tons of work to do, because through the act of creating you will eventually find your chops. I know firsthand that my writing here on GF has changed over the 18 months this site has been alive, and it's still not where I want it to be. But enough from me. Listen to Glass tell you himself. [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE] (thx Corky)