Improve the World and Quit Your Job

I will be the first to admit that it's not easy to maintain a decent blog. Most bloggers, including me, are part-time at best. In fact most of us have full time jobs, families and other hobbies beside blogging, and most never make a cent from our work. We have to fit it in whatever we do on the blog somewhere between dinner and bedtime, typically.

This part-time/unpaid status creates two problems for bloggers (and by extension, readers):

1. Lack of new original content, and;
2. Lack of time to locate interesting "borrowed" content

It's always more difficult to create than to copy or mimic. I think the best way to create new content is probably to go on epic rides, take killer pictures of the adventures, and then craft some funny, insightful prose to tell the tale to the world. In reality, if 9-5 wage slaves could do epic rides and take killer photos, they would be on staff at Outside magazine by now. What with this now being late winter, the only new bike content most of us can generate is some amusing anecdote about the last winter project we completed (replacing brake cables - fuck yeah!) or the foibles of winter bike commuting (the roads sucked and I fell down).

The lack of original content is exacerbated by lack of time on the blogger's part to locate and comprehend interesting or relevant information from other sources. With limited content coming into the (ugh) 'Blogosphere"the re-posters are left to sift through the bins for something that is both interesting and has not been done too many times before. Give me a comparison of Jobst Brandt versus Sheldon Brown on wheel building - I would read that. But nobody can do that kind of content because it's way too much work. Way too much. That damn Portlandia video of the bike messenger, on the other hand, is easy-peesy and oh so clever. I noticed that was on the Momentum website today. And they are a magazine for Pete's sake. Even the content-creators are linking at this point.

We have a content crisis on our hands. What this world needs is more content and less recycling. To do that, I think all the part-time bloggers with any potential at all should quit their jobs as soon as possible, start sponging off their spouses and families, and throw themselves headlong into blogging. Think about it - money and a job is only one aspect of life, and that would create opportunity for your co-workers you leave behind and lighten the overhead of your company. I am talking EPIC rides, wonderful "you" time to reflect and compose, and the unmitigated love of thousands of admiring readers who wish they could be, in some small way, just like you.

Be sure to let me know how that works for you...