Journal

Why I’m Loving the Pure Blogging Project

Earlier this year, as summer started to get into full swing, I published a couple of posts that talked about getting back to pure blogging.

These posts – Why the Real Driver of Traffic is Content That Matters to You, and Pure Blogging and the Experience We Give Our Readers – saw me taking a step back and looking at how the chase for traffic, shares and monetization was making us forget the reason we started blogging in the first place.

Not for glory. Not for fame. Not for fortune. But for the sheer joy of writing (or video blogging, or podcasting).

The joy of just putting something out there, with no other agenda than to share your thoughts with the world, and see if anyone responded and started a conversation with you.

It’s the direction my own blog had been moving in for a while (from its initial premise of marketing and social media topics), and – going by the comments after each of the two posts linked above – many others wanted to see a return to the “pure blogging” approach.

So, after thinking about it for a while, and talking with some fellow bloggers whose work and style I admired, I launched the Pure Blogging project.

And it’s one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve been part of.

It’s All About the Content

When you land on the Pure Blogging home page, one of the first things you’ll see is the bold tagline, “It’s all about the content.”

This is something that was the driver of the project to begin with (and remains that way today).

Instead of worrying about creating the kind of “viral content” [*cough*] that many bloggers and content creators are happy producing, Pure Blogging is the antithesis of that.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content. #pureblogging” quote=”Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content. #pureblogging”]

No buzzwords. No clickbait titles that have little (or nothing) to do with the post. No easy listicles like “Top 50 Content Rules for Content Marketers”, blah blah.

Nope. None of that would be encouraged at Pure Blogging.

Instead, it’d be what moves you at the time of writing.

It could be a personal story. A story about someone or something that shaped who you are today.

It could be about personal battles, or supporting those going through battles of their own.

It could be a story about faith (or how faith was lost).

It could be something as simple as why someone has so many pets.

The only caveat that I gave the folks kind enough to be part of the project was simple – no hate, bigotry, bullying, or any of that crap. Everything else was pretty much good to go.

Because of this open approach, Pure Blogging has resulted in some amazing posts, and the kind of topics that more often than not get bypassed in lieu of “content this”, “social media that”, etc.

http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/1953-woody-old-spice/

http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/this-is-not-a-dress-rehearsal-this-is-your-life/

http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/a-question-of-faith-or-why-are-aliens-less-believable-than-religion/

http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/one-child-worth/

http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/wrestling-time-dinosaurs/

http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/the-day-i-died/

http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/a-writer-stops/

As you can see from these posts above, there’s a huge variety in the topics being discussed.

Some are funny, some are sombre. Some are introspective, some are optimistic. Others are somewhere in-between.

The one thing they all have in common, though, is they are written from the heart, and talking to you – the reader – as if you’re the only other person in the room.

In short, they’re pure blogging at its finest.

Rediscover What Blogging Can Be

There is absolutely nothing wrong with creating content for the masses. There is zero wrong with creating content that needs to be created a certain way to meet business goals.

That was never the reason Pure Blogging was started.

Instead, Pure Blogging came to be simply to counter the easy, lazy way of content creation that seems to be ever more pervasive today.

If shares, comment counts and page views are the goals by which you set your content strategy, then Pure Blogging is probably not for you.

Although, ironically, by ignoring all of these goals and simply concentrating on the content, Pure Blogging has a decent amount of each – go figure!

However, if you’re a fan of blogging from the heart; blogging that inspires; blogging that makes you think differently from when you first landed on the page… then I invite you over to check out the posts currently on the site.

You may just find you have a new favourite blog. Well, apart from this one, of course… 😉

And if you’re finding you want a change from writing for social proof metrics alone, and you want to get back to creating the content that really matters to you, there’s an open invite to be part of the team, which you can find here.

Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content.

The Only Thing That’s Dead Is Your Everything Is Dead Spiel

I?m a little tired. Not physically. I could always do with a little more sleep, but then so can everyone.

No.

I?m more tired about the constant ?The End of PR?, ?The End of?Marketing?, ?The End of Blogging? and ?The End of Advertising? missives? that seem to be flying about at the minute.

I can?t open my email subscriptions without the latest link shouting?out ?The end of?. Where now for Industry X??.

It seems?that there?s an ?End of?? blog post for every *normal* one at the?minute.

Why?

Why do we have to bang the nails into the coffin of industries that?are still very much alive?

Why do we have to look at an industry that?s been around for years as ?ending?, just because there are new tools?available?

Is there really such a thing as an ending, anyway?

End or Mend?

Instead of saying an industry is ending, how about we say it?s?mending instead? If an industry is really viewed as being broken, should?we be closing the door on it or helping it back on its feet?

If your pet breaks its leg in an accident, do you immediately want to? put it to sleep or do you love it back to health?

If you break the?point on your trusty pencil, do you sharpen it or throw it in the bin??Even when that pencil eventually writes its last word, you don?t stop using pencils ? you start afresh.

But it?s still with the same type of?pencil.

When you?ve taken your last step on a particular journey, it doesn?t mean your travels are over ? it simply means there?s a new journey to? begin.

It?s easy to say something is finished ? you don?t have to worry?about it anymore as it heads for that big garbage bag of irrelevance.

The harder part?is making irrelevant into relevant.

It?s not easy, but if there are solid enough foundations already there, isn?t it better than starting again?

The Difference Being First Off the Train

Each morning, I commute from my home in Burlington to the office where I work in Toronto, and each morning, I pretty much follow the same routine.

Because the commute is about two hours each way (I need to catch two trains because of where the office is located), I tend to have a relaxing time on the first train.

This means settling back, reading a book, looking out the window, or just sitting there, eyes closed, listening to my iPod’s “Commute” list.

When the train pulls into Toronto, I sit patiently and wait for the other commuters to get off, then make my way through Union Station to get to the TTC (the municipal transit system).

Because I’ve waited until pretty much everyone else is off, the walk through Union can be pretty crowded, as commuters from other recently-arrived trains join the throng.

But it’s a price I’m willing to pay to avoid the crush of trying to access the stairs?from platform to station upon arrival.

This morning, though, I did things a little differently – and it was like a different world.

Seeing the Same but Alternative Universes

This morning, the train I take each day was delayed, which meant that there’d be more than the usual number of people getting on at the station before mine.

So, instead of wandering upstairs as usual (because it’s the Quiet Zone, and silence is encouraged, which I love), I decided to sit at the first seat just inside the door.

I could still relax, and actually stretch my feet out because of where the seat was located, and with my headphones on, I didn’t really hear the chatter of the morning commute.

It was when I reached Union Station that everything changed.

As the train pulled in, I stood up and waited at the door to get off. When the doors opened, it was a clear path to the stairs – no crowd, no pushing to get closer to the door, nothing.

Simply a short walk to the stairs and down I went.

When I entered Union Station itself, I wondered if the train had taken a detour to a little suburban station, it was so quiet!

Whereas normally I’m just part of a bigger crowd all trying to find our place in the goal of getting out without injury, this morning I maybe saw about 30 people between leaving the train and exiting the station onto Front Street.

Oh, I knew the crowd was still there – but now they were behind me, out of reach and out of my way. The difference was staggering.

Even when I exited onto Front Street, the difference continued.

No throbbing mass of people moving in one coordinated sardine can of walking. No bumping into strangers (or being bumped into). No angry looks as you nip in front of someone just to avoid being pushed along a direction you didn’t want to travel.

It was a weird experience. The surroundings were the same, but the interactions were anything but.

And it was glorious.

We Don’t Always Have to Be First, But Sometimes It’s Nice

Of course, once I hit the TTC, everything was back to normal, and the crush of the rush was on again. So much for my calm sojourn from the previous five minutes.

But riding the TTC to the office made me think of the early morning experience and what it meant in the bigger picture.

You see, often we leave all the movement to others, and we’ll just go along for the ride, happy to be involved.

We see bloggers we want to emulate, so we post vacuous content that we think is like theirs, but in truth is a pointless exercise – because that blogger’s already done it.

We see brands we want to ride the coattails of, so we come up with lazy content and advertising that’s a second-rate copy of what could have been.

We see people on social networks sharing their perfect lives, and we try and compete in a competition that can never be won, because it’s a facade of what’s really their everyday lives.

In short, we don’t take the first step and enjoy that moment on our own and all that brings, because we’re so used to the so-called wisdom of the crowd and the places that might take us (but rarely does).

As actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein once said,

It’s a wonderful world. You can’t go backwards. You’re always moving forward. It’s the wonderful part about life. And that’s terrific.

How we choose to move forward is where we create the adventure.

We can go with the crowd and see where that takes us. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that – I’ve yet to fail to make it to my office because of flowing with the crowd. I may be a little late, but I’ll get there.

Or, we can stand up once in a while and be the one that gets off the train first, and see what it’s like to lead.

The clarity. The wide open path ahead. The choice of taking steps A, B or C today, because no-one else has reached them yet.

We don’t always have to be first. But it’s nice to not have to worry about the crowd, and the direction it’s moving, now and again.

Try it sometime. You never know what might happen.

One Way Conversations While Sitting on Park Benches

When I had just turned 30, I lived and worked for a while in a place called Thurso, at the top of the Scottish mainland.

It’s primarily a fishing town (or, at least, it used to be) and, as such, has some wonderful parks and coastal areas lined with walkways and benches.

One of these areas lies on the road out of Thurso to Scrabster, which is a small harbour town that helps connect that part of the world to the North Sea and all the trade that comes from it.

Every weekend, I’d jump on my bike and cycle over to The Ferry Inn in Scrabster, as they have some of the best steak and seafood you’ll get anywhere.

On my return, I’d always stop at a little bench just off the main road, and look out to the sea and the islands of Orkney, Hoy and beyond.

For about six weeks or so, without fail, there’d be an elderly gent there, perhaps about late 70’s or early 80’s, staring out to sea.

I’d sit beside him, and attempt to strike up a conversation, but I never got anything but perhaps a nod or a grunt to whatever I was talking about.

It didn’t matter if it was the beautiful views, the weather, the local elections, the dwindling workforce as they moved south of Inverness, etc. – it was always the same result.

Until one day near the end of the summer.

The Timing of the Moment

It’s not that I thought the old man was ignorant. Nor did I consider that my conversation topics were so enthralling that of course they deserved a response.

Hell, I was just happy to sit and enjoy these moments with another living soul, who clearly enjoyed the surroundings as much as I did.

But one day, I stopped mid-sentence and turned to face my silent compadre.

“You know,” I started, “if you keep this up, I’m going to have to report you to the police for anti-social behaviour.”

The old man looked at me, and the first crack of a smile appeared on his lips. Then he was laughing out loud, and tears formed in his eyes as the laughter continued.

His laughter was contagious, and soon both of us were laughing like maniacs without a care in the world.

[clickToTweet tweet=”If you think someone isn’t listening to you, just wait until you’re both laughing like maniacs!” quote=”If you think someone isn’t listening to you, just wait until you’re both laughing like maniacs!”]

When the laughter subsided, he looked at me, still with laughter’s twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, Christ,” he said, “you have no idea how funny that actually is, given I’m co-chair of the Noise Abatement Society here! You’d be complaining about me to me!”

This started us laughing again, and we parted ways that day a little wiser, and a lot happier.

The next week, the old man wasn’t there. Nor the week after. It turns out he died of a heart attack at home a few days after that first and last time we finally spoke.

The following week, I took my hip flask with me, and raised a toast to my silent-but-for-one-day companion, and wished him well.

We Are Always Connecting

A couple?years later, I was in charge of a call centre team in England for one of the bigger telecom companies.

As part of the role, I was to train advisors on best practices for interacting with customers, especially if they were irate at the service (which they often were).

During one of these training sessions, one of my new starts asked why we even needed this part of the training, given that irate customers would just be shouting and not actually listening to anything we said.

For the first time in two years, it made me think of the old man on the bench, and the one-way conversations we enjoyed until that one moment of connection.

I recounted that story to the new start and his soon-to-be colleagues. And I paired it with this little bit of advice.

We may think no-one is listening to us, but they’re always listening. Always. We just don’t know they are. So what we say will always have an impact – make sure we say something they can relate to.

Like the old man on the bench, and my belief that everything I was saying was falling on deaf ears.

It’s not that he wasn’t listening; it’s just that he chose how to respond.

The fact he did respond – even with just a nod of the head or a grunt of the throat – meant I was getting through.

That led to the magical moment we shared just before his passing.

It?s something we can all do.

Just because it might look like no-one is listening doesn?t actually mean they?re not.

Sometimes it’s the one-way conversations that are the most enlightening of all – enjoy them.

Those Random Memories (Or How We Craft a Life)

Recently, I’ve been having a running “battle” with my five year old son, Ewan, around the topic of age.

You see, last month, I turned 47, and to Ewan, that’s really old. Like, really old.

So old, in fact, he can’t wrap his still-innocent head around why it’d be wrong for a 47-year old man to be with a 15-year old girl – the age he thinks his mum is.

But I digress…

On the way home from the train station tonight, after my wife had brought the kids to meet me from my commute home, Ewan flipped the numbers and said 47 was like 74.

If that’s true, I really dread to think what a 74-year old guy would be doing with a 15-year old girl.

Although I failed to ask how old that would make mum now, as his quick-math turnaround of making me older by almost 30 years was still ringing in my ears…

And, looking back on that conversation from just a few short hours ago as I’m doing now, it made me think of all those random memories we acquire as get older.

Life and The Way We Craft It

It’s funny how we start to accept the journey of getting older as we actually take it.

When I was 17, the last thing I could ever envision was what I’d be doing 30 years from then. Instead, all I cared about was being old enough to go to a bar, and find girls once there.

Age – whether that be middle age, where I am now, or old age, where I’m hopefully headed – was a far-off mystery, yet to be discovered.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I didn’t appreciate the fact I would be getting older anywhere near as much as I should have.

I didn’t realize that the best part of my life would be the random parts I looked back on as they came to me in the most random of moments.

Laying in a hot bath, and suddenly thinking about the time I crashed a milk float into a fence by driving backwards, without looking where I was going.

Watching the world go by from the train I commute to work on, and thinking about the time when I dropped a stink bomb in a busy nightclub, just to clear the bar area.

Reading a book with my children, and thinking back to when I had no children and the lack of completion I now know I had without that storytelling end to the day.

Or simply thinking about a conversation with my son a few hours earlier, and how that inspired the post you’re reading now.

Open Up to Randomness

We lead such busy lives. We commute for hours each day so we can pay the bills and keep a roof over our family’s heads.

We send an email to a client, a vendor, a colleague, instead of sending a text to our children, or our special other half, just to let them know we love them.

We keep so much stuff in our heads in order to function – or, at least, give us the sense of functionality – that we don’t leave enough room for the important stuff.

Those random memories that remind us of who we once were, and who we can still be, if we’d simply open the door to that moment when it arrives.

We spend our days being so serious. Right or wrong, that’s our main occupation these days, just so we can “function”.

I’m tired of functionality.

I aim to be more random. Randomness makes me laugh.

If that means I get a funny look on the train because I’m laughing aloud at a silent memory, so be it.

It’s a small price to pay to remain human.