Why can't I seem to get some momentum going in my weblogging? It has not been for the lack of saying, "Let me try again. I promise, dear readers, this time will be different." Although my weblogs have been very sleepy, I am succeeding in writing in my wiki in an almost daily fashion. Yeah! In quite a few ways, I find the wiki to be a publishing environment more conducive to my way of working. I like the way in which I can accumulate materials in a logical, networked way much more easily than I could in a blog. Certainly, I found that my wiki was missing a chronological framing, which I have half-heartedly shoehorned into my wiki with the "Daily Notes". (I say shoehorned because the navigational structures are currently very weak.)
So with my wikis going so well, why not just drop my blogs? Weblogs are perhaps an easier way to navigate the chronological aspects of my online presence. My weblogs could provide another layer of redaction. The wiki -- at least the way I use it -- is a messier place. I did not want everyone to have to follow the muck if they did not want to. Moreover, the separate personal and professional weblogs was a big attempt to distinguish my personal and private worlds. The wiki conflates the two. I have thought about building a personal and private wiki -- and that might still happen -- but for the moment, maintaining two wikis for the personal/private split is too much work. (That is not to say, however, that I won't want to spin off ad hoc wikis or ones for the Scholar's Box, a group project.)
Also I had the idea of "publishing" my pieces, freezing them when I ported them to my blog. By default, I have left pages on my wiki open for constant re-editing. Freezing things is sometimes helpful. Maintaining a two-tier web presence meant writing stuff first in my wikis and then transfer/repurpose materials for my weblogs. That's where things did not work out as desired.
I think that something can be done about this problem. I think that the big problem was that I did not leave enough time for the editing and republishing process. I want to see now whether I can
A happy consequence of a better workflow would be solving the continual phenomenon of de novo creation of blog entries. I don't seem to have any problems with writing on my wiki. But when I sat down to blog immediately, I froze. There was too much pressure I was putting on myself to write really good stuff without giving myself room to doodle and noodle.