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I was very humbled to get a Lifetime Achievement Award at Social Media Day CMB. Mainly because I don’t blog as much anymore. I’ll get into why cause that may be an interesting post (after ages).

It is, of course, funny to get a lifetime achievement thing at age 30, but in Internet years that might as well be 100. I remember a time before Internet, making me a bit of an old timer. There’s an entire generation coming up that takes this stuff for granted. I’ve been talking to people who remember a time before TV or electricity really, that’s a trip.

I have been writing for a long time, but frequency has dropped from a few times a day to once a week. Why?

Blogging technology is old

When I started blogging in Canada in like 2003 it was the easiest publishing technology out there. But it’s not anymore. Writing now writing a blog post is kinda difficult, I write in straight HTML, I put complicated image and alignment code, I manually write and align the excerpt. It’s not like Facebook where you put an image and text and it resizes and everything, there’s a bit of work between thought and publish. I could, of course, give this blog its first redesign since 2004 but, yeah, I should probably do that.

More broadly, sites like Facebook and Twitter have made it easier to publish there and (relatively) harder to self-publish. This site has been hacked, I have to do backups, I have to update, it can get to be a pain.

Politics is static

This blog really started in the tragic and heady times of tsunami and war. I definitely don’t miss it, but there was always something to write about.

Now there’s a basic staticness of crap – a high ranking policeman is implicated as a contract killer, the government tried to issue a draconian media policy, casual corruption, wasteful spending, etc. The UNP is not a real opposition and though things continue to aggravate, nothing really moves. Of course, this is the time when writing and discussion is needed the most, but sometimes the energy just isn’t there.

Life is busy

I’m also working full-time on a startup (YAMU). Today, for example, I need to revise a business plan, hassle some recruits, replace a broken laptop, sort out an SLT connection, pick up some cheques, etc. I also have any number of phone calls and emails to return. There is time for blogging, however, if I make it, and I’ve found that making time for focused activities actually creates more time than it dissipates.

Which is all to say

I’ll come back now. Even if the interface is old, if the political scene is mold, if life is busy. I miss blogging and it does give me the energy to put into everything else. No promises, but I’ll try to post more frequently. I’d like to thank Etisalat and the SMDayCMB organizers for the award and try not to make it an epitaph.