Through blogging, we discover our thoughts and other people.

Henrik Karlsson's "Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog" nudged me to explore two threads of thought:

Writing helps you refine your thoughts:

• This reminds me of Sonke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes and David Bessis's Mathematica.
  • Everything drives toward writing; writing is how to clarify your thoughts
  • Writing helps you improve your intuition, which feeds your writing.
• I want to understand:
  • What's possible?
  • What's easier? what's harder (for now?)
  • How can we make things. easier? How can we make more things doable?
• and also:
  • What am I thinking?
  • what do I want to try?
• I want to get better at this through practice.

Writing helps you find your tribe:

• Definitely - and the more idiosyncratic my posts are, the more amazing it is when someone resonates with it, even years later.
• (I was amused to see him trace his tweet's flow through Stian Håklev, who reached out for a conversation in 2010 about peer-to-peer education because he read my blog.)
• I deliberately boost my tribe's information flow:
  • Emacs Calendar
  • Emacs News
  • EmacsConf
  • Emacs.tv
• I want to get better at this by
  • following my curiosity
  • improving search and serendipity
  • connecting people & ideas with community infrastructure and resources

Both sides: Because it's fun and leads to more awesomeness.