It is not uncommon for me to read through bits of my archives. It always makes me think I should blog more, because it is such fun (usually) to remember the way things were. Lately the posts I've been going back to most often are the posts that probably inspired the biggest yawns when they were written.
If you've been reading here for a while, you might remember that I used terrifically unfriendly statistics software to complete my dissertation analyses. From time to time I blogged about things I had been learning. I use those posts all the time. I wish I had written ten more. I have no idea -- none -- how I did the factor analysis for my dissertation, because I didn't blog about it. This week I am kicking myself for not writing a post about calculating the variance explained in hierarchical linear modeling. Almost certainly, all of you are like, "Thank the Lord that post never appeared in my Google Reader feed, because I might have fallen asleep and injured my face on my desk in the time it took to scroll through something so boring." I'm still a little rueful.
I well-remember those posts and they never made me fall asleep on my desk.
I'm not saying I read them with super-close attention, mind you (I had no context for real comprehension), but you can safely wish you'd written more without fearing that your readers would have been injured or even offended, I think.
Posted by: Jody | May 22, 2013 at 06:15 AM
Jamie: I completely get this.
Some people blog stories about their kids for no other purpose than to help them remember the stories later. I blog recipes so I can find them later. If I had been blogging during my dissertation -- assuming that wouldn't have been the procrastination straw that finally prevented this camel from ever finishing -- mine would have been full of that stuff too.
Sorry you didn't blog it back then. It would have been great. When I was working on my diss., I kept a paper journal of notes -- diary style, not file-cabinet style -- so I wouldn't forget some detail and could say, "What was that thing I found about in November last year?" Yeah, if only it had been SEARCHABLE BY GOOGLE. AND INDEXABLE BY CATEGORIES. What a great tool that would have been.
Posted by: bearing | May 22, 2013 at 08:33 AM