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

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 Then I went back and read that year of ghost posts on the unpublished blog.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.