I'm trying to think

Sorry is not the hardest word…

…Onomatopoeia is pretty tricky. Even so, I’d like to say sorry to any fellow bloggers I may have offended in last week’s Sunday Ramble. It was intended to be a discussion point rather than a point of division.

Theo (who also has a new blog), summed it up with ‘reportage vs opinion’. Do we blog just to diarise or do we blog because we have opinions and ideas? I guess it’s up to the individual blogger, but I’d like to see less sitting on the fence and more people putting a hand grenade amongst the pigeons. Jim Stump has done just this on his blog and stuck up for his and Ben’s hard won pencil at the D&AD awards this year. Scroll down and Jim’s also written some really good thoughts about Digital Art Directors vs Offline ADs. Meanwhile Ben has been continuing his brilliant idiosyncratic view of life on his blog and Hale has been doing what a Hale does. The Creative Social is also thriving and I’m really looking forward to seeing some digital clever clogs this evening at Play.

Existential blog crisis alert

"I'm trying to think" has reached a crossroads. The last few months of blogging have been great fun and I've actually met a few lovely people throughout the blogosphere, many of whom are listed on the left below. However, in the last month or so this blog has suffered a certain amount of neglect due to a new job, the builders and a lack of time. As a result, it's taken on more of a public diary function which worked well for the life drawing experiment (which is now over) - and the question is, which way should this blog go next? Please feel free to leave comments and make constructive recommendations.

One way is to make it more advertising focused, but I feel like that is covered better by other blogs like Russell Davies' and new to the mix is Andy Sandoz's blog. Also, I've volunteered to contribute to the new blog for the Creative Social, which could turn into a really interesting area that reflects the collective consciousness of the digital creative world. We’ll see.

Blogging is an experiment for anyone writing one and up to now my experiment has resulted in a wide ranging mix of subjects and themes – which I quite like. I’ve tried not to use it as a soapbox, I’ve tried to make it interesting and I’ve tried to use it as a reason to look at the world in a different way and find something to say about life and the way we live it. I guess sometimes life is overwhelmed with duty and tasks and reflection has to wait for another day, maybe that’s where I am right now. Blogs get interesting when life is at a crossroads, and blogs hit crossroads when life is all about getting your head down. Of course, the reason for a blog is that it makes you stop and look at the scenery, it makes you slow down a little and enjoy the journey, so life isn’t just a collection of tasks and random events, it’s considered, recorded and captured. (Which is another reason I don’t want this blog to become an advertisng/branding “I saw this cool thing the other day” list.) Life is more than that, and I want this blog to be more than that – so thanks for reading and I will try and find the time to think a bit more about stuff and write it down here.

The things people search for - aka Sunday Ramble

Yes, it's my fourth post of the day - but the builders are in and my big TV is in storage so blogging to Bach is what passes for entertainment around here. I had a quick look through my stats and visitors and if you don't know how this kind of thing works, you can click on the search or link that the visitor came from.

So I clicked on a google search visit and this is what someone had typed in "what make are maximillion coopers sunglasses." Deep stuff indeed. I'm sure they were thrilled with my musings on life drawing - although it looks like they got dropped into my half-formed theory of "VIP brands." I don't think Max will be inviting me to many more Gumball parties if half the time someone searches for him they land on my disparaging remarks about his brand and its spinoffs. Nevermind, eh!

I got three hits today from Mark Earls blog. For some delightful reason he wrote a nice little profile of me on his blog, although when I went back for the permalink, I'd just fallen off the bottom, having been knocked off by a couple of old rockers putting on a show in Camden - that Herd keeps growing!

Anyway, judging by the Maximillion Cooper hits, I'm going to start randomly name dropping in my posts just to see what kind of traffic I can generate. Although I did see Simon Pegg in Crouch End yesterday and Simon Amstell in Harringay Sainsburys cereal aisle at the bottom of my road on Friday evening - good to see he's no more rock & roll than me! I like the idea of a celebrity in each aisle and the staff could give directions, "Branston pickle? Turn left at Brad Pitt, go straight past Catherine Zeta Jones and it's on the bottom shelf just above Tom Cruise." There we are, that's not a bad start is it?

What this blog is for

I'm increasingly surprised by people's reactions to this blog. On the whole, I thought blogs were pretty ubiquitous - everyone 'seems' to have a blog these days, but clearly that's not the case if people's reactions are anything to go by.

For a start, people have ignored the title of this blog - 'I'm trying to think.' This a diary of my thoughts and my thought process - an attempt to make sense of the world through recording ideas and sharing them. It is not the comment pages of a newspaper. It is not editorial opnion, it's reflections on the world that one day may be one thing, and another the next.

However, some people still seem to think 'how dare you.' How dare you stick your head above the parapet and express yourself and ideas. How dare you have a private / public space where you are allowed to tell me what you might be thinking. I say, that's what the comment button is for (and thanks Freeze for your great deconstuction on my ramblings on The Theory of Unevolution. That's the spirit.) Emailing back comments and put-downs somehow seems to miss the point of what the Internet is about. It's a bit like waiting outside the back door of stand up club to collar the comedian because he made a joke you didn't like. He's on the stage, tell him now!

One more thing before I start ranting (which I have tried not to do on this blog - a rant is a reaction to now, I want this blog to be a more considered take on the world than my drunken dinner party persona). One more thing, how do you see the world? Do you see the world as a place to be feared, to be suspicious about, a place where people are always trying to get one over on each other? Or do you see the world as a place to be reflected on, a world that wants to share thoughts and ideas in a positive way. (I realise the people who know me may be surprised by that, I'm not talking about personality, I'm talking about ideas.)

And if you disagree with any of this, that's your right. If you have anything to say, click comments and go for it.

Made me laugh

Saw this on Jim's moblog - it made me laugh a lot.

How to be interesting by Russell Davies

Love this from Russell Davies - How to be interesting. He's such a clever clogs. I'm going to print it out and stick it everywhere. Thanks Russell.