I'm blogging for me damnit. Come along for the ride.

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In all of the recent discussion of things like gay marriage on Domino blogs these past weeks, some people have questioned why that type of content is included on a technology blog, or even if it SHOULD be included. Personally I endorse discussion like this to the fullest. And here’s why:

My blog is for me, and yours should be for you. Plain and simple.

I write this because I want to blog for my reasons, not the audience. Believe me, I’m happy that you read and comment, but I would do it if no-one ever came here. In fact, I had a blog that I kept for about a year that I never published the URL to. I just did it for me so I could chronicle things that were happening in my life, whether or not they would be technology related. So I write here to stay creative, I write here to tackle technology issues, I write here to document cool things, places, gadgets and people in my life. I write this blog for me.

Yes, this is narcissistic. Very much so as a matter of fact. But what I’ve learned is that I enjoy blogs more in which I get to know the actual person behind the blog. If the blog is all code and nothing else, then it’s not a blog, it’s a code repository. I want to know about your family and your politics and your gadgets and your life. I also want to know what you think of Lotus tech. The Domino blogging community is unique in that you can get ALL of these perspectives. I love seeing what other people in Lotus technology think about the same topics I’m seeing every day. This community does that job brilliantly.

So to the people that say a tech blog should ONLY be a tech blog, well, if you don’t want to read my side rants, then so be it. Maybe when I get my Domino-only RSS feed I can accomodate you better. I’ll get my category views up soon so you can avoid what you don’t want to read.

You see, recently, I’ve run into a problem. Basically, I was self-censoring a bit. At Lotusphere, I met so many people that read this blog that it was a little overwhelming. I started second-guessing what I should and shouldn’t post. I wasn’t writing about everything I wanted to because I felt that it might not belong on a Lotus tech blog. Then I went back and read that year of ghost posts on the unpublished blog. There was a passion there and a wonderful documentation of place and time. It was damn good, and by self-censoring myself now, I know I won’t enjoy the end result here as much. I firmly believe that if you are true to yourself and have a passion for what you are writing, people will follow.

So screw it. This blog now has no limits. I’m blogging for me, and I sure do hope you join me for the ride.