Be Interesting

I started blogging back in September of 2004. Sun had started urging all of its employees to blog. I had never even heard of blogging but I thought I would give it a try. Sun was an incredibly nurturing place to start blogging. There was an internal discussion list that people used to ask questions and to give hints about blogging. One of the fathers of blogging at Sun was Tim Bray. He urged Sun bloggers to follow the Sun blogging  policy that he published. Many of his precepts like "Don't tell secrets" and "Quality Matters" are valid for anyone who blogs whether it be in a corporate setting or not. I try hard to continue to follow them.

One of the precepts of that policy was "Be interesting". It is now over three years since I started blogging. I am no longer a part of corporate America. I love blogging and my overarching goal for my blog is to be interesting. To be interesting is in fact one of my goals in life. I don't want to bore myself and I certainly don't want to bore others.

The question I often think about is what makes a blog interesting? Tim says

"Write What You Know · The best way to be interesting, stay out of trouble, and have fun is to write about what you know."

I think that is good advice. It is also why I need to be an interesting person to write an interesting blog. One of the fun and challenging things about being retired is that I get to explore interesting on my own.  I no longer have an employer to help define what makes me interesting.

Some people consider a blog a personal journal. People who talk only about themselves are not particularly interesting. So I don't think a log of what I do each day would work for me. I do find that people who do interesting things write interesting blogs.

The people in my blogroll to the right write blogs that I find very interesting. They are certainly good examples of  what makes a blog interesting.

I don't have a magic answer to the 'interesting question' and my blog and I are a works in progress. I would really like to hear what others think makes a blog interesting.