Thinking again

I miss my old blogging habit. I miss the intentionality, the slower pace, the thoughtfulness and the openness. Perhaps above all I miss the various unpublished draft posts and what they represented. I’d like to start thinking again. Thanks to two blogging stalwarts Ton and Euan, I might have the momentum to do so and today seemed like a good day to turn the clocks back.

If Derek Cabrera is right, and “knowledge = information x thinking”, then I have been indulging more in the information side of things than the thinking. Facebook, Twitter et al have all made reading and connecting easier and services like Readwise.io have made keeping highlights easier. Increasingly, though, and perhaps because of that ease of use, I have noticed I’m doing less of the hard work of trying to structure my thoughts and put them down in a form that makes sense. Unpublished drafts are evidence of that effort but fewer and fewer between.

I suppose essentially I’m feeling like my online consumption is the equivalent of fast food and ready meals and that I’d like to start cooking for myself a little more. The first step in that direction is sorting out some ingredients. Looking through my old feeds I seem to have a lot of dormant ones and a large number that seem to be the equivalent of the paprika seasoning at the back of the cupboard. Ton’s post on feed reading by social distance looks like a typically well thought out approach so that’s where I’ll start.