Why I Blog Instead of Writing Books

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I’ve been really poor at blogging on this blog. What can I say? I’ve been busy writing thousands of blog posts on my Healthcare IT blogs and my reality TV blogs (mostly Pure Dancing with the Stars now). One day those will disappear, be sold, I’ll shut them down, I’ll stop doing them, or some other major event. Maybe then I’ll have time to do this daddy blog. We’ll see if it happens before my kids move out of the house and the daddy stories really change.

Regardless, this blog has always just been for fun. I’ve often joked to people that this will be my retirement blog. It’s what I do if I ever sell my other blogs and “retire.”

That said, today I came across this incredible post by one of my favorite bloggers, a Venture Capitalist named Fred Wilson. He celebrated 15 years of blogging and I’m pretty sure I’ve read every post for at least 12 years and maybe more. I started blogging 13 years ago, so we’ve both been through a blogging journey that is very similar in many ways, but completely different in others. However, he captured my perspective on writing a book vs blogging quite well:

I regularly get people coming to me and asking me to write a book. I always pass because I can’t imagine writing in a format that has an end. I can’t imagine writing in a format that doesn’t provide instant feedback. I can’t imagine writing in a format that requires a structure. I can’t imagine writing in a format that isn’t a stream of consciousness. I can’t imagine thinking about what I am going to write more than ten minutes before writing it. I can’t imagine killing trees to carry my words. So I will continue to write a blog. It’s the perfect format for me. AVC is way more than a book. It is a living breathing thing that sustains me and that is me.

Sometimes people ask me what I’d do if I sold my blogs or if I stopped blogging. My response is always simple. I can’t ever see myself not blogging. 13 years in, blogging is part of my life. It’s something I love. I won’t likely keep blogging at the pace I’m blogging today, but I can’t imagine ever not blogging. It’s just part of who I am.