Sunday, January 17, 2010

A new blog?

First - thanks to all those that asked me questions on my question widget at
the top right of this page --->
I really love this format, so please keep them coming

A new blog?
I've been itching to start a new blog for a very long time now. This blog (BiPolar Etcetera) will always continue, but I'm not sure its the right vehicle for my new ideas. Some of the reasons I feel this way

  • This blog started out (way back in 2005 people!) pretty much exclusively about BiPolar. At that stage it was titled "BiPolar Daily". As time went by the post-every-day started getting some gaps, so I changed the name to "BiPolar Daily(ish)". By 2007 already I was wanting to do a lot more posts about non-bipolar stuff so the title changed once again to "BiPolar Etcetera". Although this has given me a lot more latitude, I still feel some kind of deep obligation to post bipolar related stuff. It is clear that 95% of my readers come here for BiPolar info, so why would they wan't to know my thoughts on Google, SEO, the world economy and human thinking patterns in general?

  • Another thorny issue is that I'm wanting a blog that I can sometimes steer some of my work aquaintences to, and link to it from my numerous other online profiles. I'm still not comfortable to link them to BPE. 95% of my aquantinces (work and social) have no clue that I'm bipolar, and no matter how much I've wanted to, I just cannot take that final leap and broadcast to the WHOLE world that I suffer from BiPolar. It is not always advantageous when you are operating in competitive business environments.

  • As a result of the above, I've been going through a sort of Online Identity Crisis for the past few years. I've literally got dozens of active online profiles at different sites and they are totally fragmented, with little carefully constructed firewalls between different clusters of them. There is the BiPolar & Whacky Ideas cluster, the Old School Friends cluster, the Strictly Work cluster, the SEO Cluster, and a few others. Trust me, it is pure schizophrenia maintaining all these seperate identities.

  • One of my main functions in my career is ranking high in search engines and this is being increasingly influenced by incoming links from outside sites, especially social media sites. The larger your online footprint, the better your sites rank. But, as I've just said, I can't link all my stuff together, so I'm losing a heck of a lot of "link juice". Most guys in my industry link their twitter account with their facebook account, with their blogs, with their Sphinn account, with their Digg account, with their Google Account etc. etc. and it kills me to watch their rankings rise, whilst I pump out way more online content than most of them, but cannot benefit from the crosslinking.  

  • A lesser reason is that I'm now convinced that Wordpress is a better platform than Blogger and, although I know I can migrate this blog to a Wordpress platform, I'm figuring that if I have to start from scratch learning WordPress (and there's a LOT to learn), I may as well start a new blog from scratch too.
But the jury is very much still out on this one. It is not a straightforward decision, and I also stand to lose a lot.

Like I said in the beginning, BiPolar Etcetera will continue, no matter what. In fact, if this whole plan does materialise, this blog will probably get back more onto topic, as the off-topic stuff will go elsewhere. Any thoughts or feedback would be most welcome.

6 comments:

  1. I've been reading your blog for over 3 1/2years now. I came across it not long after discovering I was Bipolar. At first it was only for information on bipolar but I actually enjoy reading everything else and the questions some of your ponderings throw up! It's lead to some great talks with my wife about life in general and where we are in the grand scheme of things.
    So thanks for sharing all these years and I look forward to reading what you write in the years to come.

    Elliot

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  2. Thanks for your comment Elliot, it makes it all worthwhile...

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  3. I don't see the extent of your "difficult decision". Perhaps your writing is like the contents of a library. Each book belongs in a different category, the same with your blogs.

    All of us don't have one single face. Multiplicity is the game of life.

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  4. You're right WBF - I've definitely got some irrational underlying issue about this whole thing which I can't quite put my finger on...

    Maybe I'm in a REAL identity crisis and its just playing out in my online life???

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  5. "Online Identity Crisis". That is EXACTLY what I am experiencing as well. Bipolar is a huge part of my life, but hardly anyone around me knows I am BPD. I would love to be able to share "all" of me on my blog, but I don't want to give up my anonymity.

    Hopefully, one day, I will get over being shy about it. But, until then, I will have a dozen online identities. Good luck to you!

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  6. I like your writing style. Nice blog.

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