So This Guys Walks into a Blog

You know that old joke about a guy walking into bar. Well, there are innumerable permutations on the joke. So only six (6) months after starting my first blog, I have to start a new one. While http://www.jennandkinnier.blogspot.com/ discusses the adventures of my wife and me including, most recently, our attempt to run our first marathon to benefit the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, this one will focus on lists of mine, my friends, and publications that I encounter. We're just starting out but hope to make Listimosa, a pun on my last name, a good one.

I constantly try to improve on the first blog, which will continue. My friend Peter coincidentally sent a link to a blog by a gentleman named Merlin Mann that covers, among other things, amateur photography. While cruising the site, I discovered his list about what makes a good blog. I enjoyed it and thought it would be good to reproduce here as one of the blog's first lists. (I have done so in accordance with the Creative Common License and the site's rules.)

The information pasted below originally appeared in 43 Folders®, a registered trademark of Merlin Mann. (This is the second person named Merlin who has had a big impact on the 2008 infancy of each of my blogs.) The URL for the original is http://www.43folders.com/2008/08/19/good-blogs. I am enjoying his blog so far and recommend it. By the way, the link at the bottom of his blog entry links to a bunch of humorous "top-five" lists. The lists of lists is quickly growing. This is quickly becoming very "meta," which is my favorite pseudo-intellectual term.

As I think about the blogs I’ve returned to over the years — and the increasingly few new ones that really grab my attention — I want to start with, ironically enough, a list. Here’s what I think helps make for a good blog.
1. Good blogs have a voice. Who wrote this? What is their name? What can I figure out about who they are that they have never overtly told me? What’s their personality like and what do they have to contribute — even when it’s “just” curation. What tics and foibles fascinate make me about this blog and the person who makes it? Most importantly: what obsesses this person?
2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?
3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go. Then, on some level, they encourage me to follow the evolution of their interest through a day or a year. There’s a story here. Ethical “via” links make it easy for me to follow their specific trail of attention, then join them for a walk made out of words.
4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated. They show some level of craft, thinking, and continuity beyond the word count mandated by the Owner of Your Plantation. If a blog has fixed limits on post minimums and maximums? It’s not a blog: it’s a website that hires writers. Which is fine. But, it’s not really a blog.
5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect. I regret there are not more blogs that see format as the container for creativity — rather than an excuse to write less or link without context more.
6. Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s. If this isn’t happening every few weeks, the blogger is either bored, half-assing, or taking new medication.
7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog. At some point, everyone wants to kill the Buddha and make their own obsessions the focus. This is good. It means you care.
8. Good blogs try. I’ve come to believe that creative life in the first-world comes down to those who try just a little bit harder. Then, there’s the other 98%. They’re still eating the free continental breakfast over at FriendFeed. A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules. Duh. I made a list, didn’t I? Yes. I did. Big fan.
And, yeah, you should disagree with potentially all of this. It’s because I have an opinion, and so do you. It’s why you probably have a blog. See? The system works.