My good friend Brian "I love a good tamale" McCallister apparently blogged about a blog entry that Hernri wrote about an IM conversation he had with Brian.

That's so meta.

They both made the point that they haven't enjoyed blogging because it felt like they were writing articles. It gets tiring sounding pedagogical all the time.

But when you blog about work all the time, and define yourself by the work you do, it's easy to fall into the CompSci Professor mindset. You learned something new or figured something out, and so you want to teach others. That's cool and awesome, but can wear you out after a while.

For the past while, I worked at an uber-stealth web 3.0 start-up. By definition, I couldn't blog about my job. I stopped blogging for a while. But the urge to write kept coming back. I had to instead focus it on non-work topics. Like music. Or random observations. Or mental musings on different ideas.

So, if you're finding it difficult to summon the will to blog, take a moment and look at your blogging habits. Have you historically been a "Java blogger" and written about things that somehow relate back to your work? Then go have a beer with a non-Geek friend, watch the sunset, have a good discussion. Then blog about that. Instead of trying to explain why nobody should use Ruby on Rails, try to make a similar argument as to why moe's new CD sucks.

Expand your domain. You are more than the job you perform. Your blog should be also.

When in doubt, just include a goofy photo or illustration to distract readers from the lack of content.

But try to avoid blogging about your cat. Nobody cares.