Garrick van Buren

Jen and I start our 12th year of marriage this week. We’ve been together for 15 years. There’s a good chance – Murphy willing – we’ll see our odometers flip together, that’d make 75 years of marriage.

Assuming we get there, we’ve got 2 more entire lifetimes in front of us.

A decade ago, my profession didn’t exist. Nearly all the companies I’ve worked for since, gone.

Assuming I’ve only really got 1 more ‘productive member of society’ lifetime left in me:

• Is the work I’m doing now what I want to be doing for another 3 decades?
• If not, what kind of work would keep me curious, interested, and fed for multiple decades?
• What can I start now, that will make my 2nd and 3rd lives less stressful and more enjoyable?
• How do I imagine for 6 decades out when I have a hard time imaging past June ’09?

After 3 years, nearly 1500 updates, exploration from many angles, numerous conversations, and wastebaskets full of crumpled analysis, I’m proud to say, I grok Twitter. Like I’ve never grokked it before¹.

I also know why Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, et al, are better* than WordPress, Blogger, MovableType, etc.

And it’s completely the blog-engines’ fault. They’re some how locked into what a ‘blog’ is.

It’s not.

While I share Dave’s complaints², I feel any free, hosted service has the same primary issue – people with accounts have no leverage in service availability.

*Poof*

and all my data is gone and I’m at the mercy of someone else’s feature set. I’m not comfortable with that. Not for my writing.

1. Hint – I’ve got a blog. The difference between this blog and something like Twitter – especially Friendfeed – is smaller than you think.

2. Dave, interesting note – the people I have lunch with are on Twitter. I suspect the people you have lunch with are on FriendFeed. Though – how we schedule lunch is less important than actually having lunch. I have a Friendfeed account primarily for your stuff that I personally preferred you published @ EGC, but either way, I pipe it through Cullect.

Back in June of ’08, I wrote a (relatively-speaking) lot here. Writing here is much more satisfying than almost any of my neigh 5k 160-character updates. Aside from the obvious freedom-to-be-verbose and control over visual presentation, and self-archiving, here is satisfying. Here is home.

Elsewhere isn’t.

When you comment here – it feels neighborly.

Elsewhere it feels like shouting at each other over the din.

While the updates here may be short (or long), this blog has regained write-of-first-refusal over other places.

“When software works, it all looks the same. When it doesn’t work, it all looks different.”

“How’s that?…Fella, I said, How’s that?”

“When software doesn’t work, it all looks scared.”

(apologies to Tom Wolfe)

Typealyzer just Myers-Briggs-ed the most recent posts on here. Turns out this blog is….

…happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.