How Many Blogs Does One Person Need?

Blogging changed my life and changed me as a man.

The Pinterest Predicament & The Rule Of Four  shares some insight about why I and other bloggers should consider using it but there is a story there that I didn’t initially recognize and it ties into the discussion about how blogging changed my life.

Ask me to tell you about how it changed my life and I’ll tell you blogging led to work. I’ll share a story or two about the freelance gigs and how it also led to full time work. Might even get into how it changed my perspective on where to live.

Where it changed me as a man is both easier and harder to express. What ten years of blogging has done is remind me that the root of who I am is a writer/storyteller.

Pinterest comes into play because I realized the stories I want to tell are major motion pictures inside my head. They aren’t just words but sights, sounds and images.

The struggle now is to figure out how to express and share these things in a way that makes me feel like you are seeing/experiencing what I see/hear/feel.

How Many Blogs Does One Person Need?

TheJackB is my primary blog but it is not uncommon to see me update Words Left Unwritten, Random Thoughts (WP) and Random Thoughts (Blogger).

Words Left Unwritten has been where I have shared much of my fiction. It is not unusual to see copies of those stories here at TheJackB but that is because it is how I back up and protect those files.

I own this domain so I figure that if I lose access or stop writing on WUL these stories are protected.

Random Thoughts is where blogging started for me, the Blogger version that is. I have retained it for sentimental reasons and because it works well as another way to promote the posts I write here. Sometimes I just write there.

The WordPress.com version of Random Thoughts was launched years ago during a time when I thought I would leave Blogger. For a long time I didn’t do much with it and then I decided it would be a place to record my thoughts. Those posts tend to be more stream of consciousness than here.

Some people have asked if I am over extended but I don’t think so. I like the freedom that comes with having multiple blogs and I think if it was all incorporated into one blog it might have a negative effect so I prefer to keep things as they are.

Why I Save Drafts

Stephen King has a book about writing in which he says writers have to be prepared to kill their little darlings and he is right. A good story needs editing. It needs another set of eyes to help you tighten and polish but that doesn’t mean drafts don’t have value.

I save drafts because I often find uses for the parts and pieces I didn’t use. If the blog was a sports team my drafts would be the role players.

They might not be the starters on the team but when I need an expert to fill a role I know I can pull them off of the bench and feel confident in their ability to get the job done.

Sometimes I hate my little darlings and they are deleted so that they never again make me feel like I punch out copious amounts of drek, but not always.

How Blogging Changed Me As A Man

This is far too meaty for me to delve into right now, can’t do it justice but I’ll try to at least give a decent preview.

I am naturally guarded and unless you are part of a select group you won’t get much from me but blogging has changed that. It has helped me open up a bit and shown me reason to be more open about life.

Blogging has also helped me shine a brighter light upon who I am and who I want to be. It has helped me focus on the future and the kind of life I want to live.

But we’ll have to save that discussion for a different day.

• Saved: Blogging