With 2009 coming to a whimpering end, I thought it appropriate to start a fresh with my blogging. This isn’t the first blog I have written, or attempted to write, but it is my hope for 2010 that I will devote just a little more time and energy to this incarnation.

And when I say that I have blogged in the past, that is a bit misleading. There was the one blog where I posted one poorly written politics-based post, one blog (that my wife and I shared) where I posted one different poorly written election-based post, and a third that I used to transcribe the details of some Twitter spam (about the evils of advertising) that I was guilty of. All in all, pretty inconsistent.

The reasons for my past missteps are, I imagine, pretty typical. The main one, I think, was time. For the last two years, I have been trying to form and stabilize a small software development company while balancing a home and social life. As anyone who has done this (or has watched someone do this) knows, starting a company from nothing requires a huge time investment. I have barely had time to see my parents, so taking the time to blog seemed a little frivolous.

Another reason, also typical, is that I have not felt like a true subject matter expert on anything I felt the urge to write about. I am firm believer that if you don’t know what the hell you are talking about, you should probably just shut up and listen to the people who know better. God forbid I write something that is not 100% correct. In short, don’t be stupid in public or around people you haven’t seen be equally stupid.

The final reason (at least the final one I will list here), is a reluctance to mix business and personal thoughts. Just as I was anxious about inviting family members, close friends, and business colleagues to the same event (my wedding), I am also anxious about mixing those posts in writing. The concern, of course, is that I will write something business related one day and then politics related the next, and the mixture of these two will alienate or offend someone. I always envision some potential client reading a post about the capabilities of a new software application and then my thoughts on Iran (for example), and getting turned off by something I said.

So what will be different this time? Well, for one I think my company has stabilized to the point where I can eek out an hour or three a night for blogging. Also, I think that the lessons that I have learned in that area over the last two years may be interesting to some. As for the second reason, being stupid in public is always a risk. All one has to do is turn on the evening news and it is apparent that others have no problem exhibiting stupidity far in excess of what can be displayed on a blog. As for the third reason, it shows a tremendous lack of faith in both my own opinions and in the intellect of my clients. If I can make a sound argument, its a sound argument regardless of who the reader is. If someone takes offense at something I have written, do I really want to be working with them anyway?

That being said, let the fourth and hopefully last of my blogs begin….