matt ryall’s weblog

A few people have asked me what has happened on my blog. Am I trying to do one post per day?

Basically, yes. Not every day, but I want to write more frequently on my blog. Two things happened in the past week to spur me on.

First, a candidate who I was interviewing over the phone mentioned my blog. He thought it was funny how old some of the content was here. Like the ‘about me’ page which basically had the same content since 2002 when I started my blog. (It has been updated now.) I realised that a lot of the content on the site didn’t really reflect who I was or what I’ve been doing recently.

Second, I came across this article on Fred Wilson’s ‘A VC’, a blog I used to read daily, about how he couldn’t find something to write on that day. This felt weird to Fred, who had written a post every day for five years.

That's an amazing achievement, but that wasn’t what affected me. I’ve read posts similar to that before. What really drove the point home was a comment and a response by Fred further down the page:

Joshua Schachter

I wish I was smart enough to have something worth saying every day.

Fred Wilson

You do, but you also are your own toughest critic of what is “smart”.

This response really struck a chord in me. He was probably right about Joshua, but he was definitely right about me. I have about thirty unfinished draft blogs sitting on my server. I have lots of ideas every day about stuff to write, but mostly dismiss it as too boring. I decided it was time to start writing.

In an interesting twist, it turns out the commenter is in fact the Joshua Schachter who founded del.icio.us and left Yahoo this week. Maybe now he’ll have more time to write on his blog too.