Getting back in the saddle.

About 4 months back, I quitted blogging. I lost interest because of frustration and lack of time.

But this year, I'm going to try again.

Why?
One of the reasons why I stopped blogging was my realization that I was doing nothing more than just regurgitating. Just writing a short blurb and then a link. Ta-da! Blog post. There was little or no original content at all.

To change this, I've set a goal for myself. For every post I write every week, at least ten percent should be original and not just an echo and a link of some news from my RSS feeds. It will be a nice challenge I reckon since I have a hard time coming up with anything original.

Another reason why I ceased posting was the feeling of frustration for not being able to post something everyday. I would push myself to write but would invariably fall flat. This leads to felling frustrated which results to pushing myself even more which would then again lead to... Well, you get point.

If I can't blog everyday or every other day, then I won't. I've decided to do my blogging during the weekends except when there is some major event or announcement.

Didn't come up with this scheme before because I was too busy going out every Saturday night last year. Sundays would end up with me nursing a hangover.

Yet another reason is the distraction from all of the social networking sites that I am a part of. I spent too much time reading about what people were doing or clicking on every link that popped up, knowing that it would be something interesting or cool. I had to know who was viewing me on Friendster and read every inane bulletin, cursing at myself for reading such drivel later on.

Near the end of 2008, I felt burnt out. I stopped using Twitter and scaled down my use of Friendster.

But there also was Facebook and Plurk.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire...

This year, I'm slowly easing myself back into Twitter.

Wait, you ask, isn't that the exact opposite of what I should do?

Well, yes. I miss the Twitter community but I seriously need to do more scaling down.

One of the steps I've done is to un-follow some Twitters especially those linking to stories like iDigg. Major timesink.

I'll do more trimming off of my social networking just like how I'll be trimming off the fat and calories from my diet.

What now?

Scheduled writing, more originality, less social networking.

Check.

What else?

I'm going to revive my two old blogs and set up two more:

Brain On Ink or Boink! will be my general all-purpose blog. Kind of a wastebasket blog if you will.

Davao Mac User is about my experiences as well as anything of interest about a company I admire: Apple. I will be cross-posting my blog posts with the Davao Apple Community at Ning.com, a community aiming to bring Mac, iPod, and iPhone users of Davao together.

The other two blogs will be about atheism and about medicine with a skeptical twist.

I'm also going to learn how to mess with CSS so that I can add my own personal design to my blogs. Good luck to me on that.

So that's it. I guess you can call this my 2009 blogging resolution.

Let's see how I'll do at the end of the year.

See you 355 days from now.