Living With Blogger’s Guilt

Hi, I’m Brett Greene and I have ‘blogger’s guilt.’  Unlike ‘Catholic guilt,’ where you feel guilty about what you’ve done, ‘blogger’s guilt’ comes from feeling guilty about what you haven’t done.  Namely, posting on your blog often enough.

Even though I post on Twitter almost incessantly, I’ve lived with Blogger’s guilt ever since I started this blog.  I’m only getting one or two posts in a week while trying to squeeze time out to write.  Beyond that, I made a point that I was going to start getting a little more personal here, and never quite got that going.

Like you, and most other people, I figure that I’m just another guy and what I have to share may not be all that interesting.  Sure, on Twitter w/ 140 characters it can be interesting when you’re following conversations, but for longer posts on a blog, hmm…I don’t know.

Regardless of that, I’m now shedding some of my mental parameters of what constitutes a ‘good’ and worthy blog post.  I’m just going to write what’s there to write and if it’s lame or uninteresting, it’ll move down the queue and be forgotten like an old Twitter status update.  So what the hay.

Besides, some of my favorite blogs are full of what seem to be innocuous little personal tidbits.  …and they’re some of the best parts.

That said, this weekend I breezed through Gary Vaynerchuk‘s new book Crush it!: Why NOW is The Time to Cash in on Your Passion and got a third of the way through Tara Hunt‘s The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business. Both books are well worth the read.  Even if you know a lot about using social media and online communities for personal and professional gain, you’ll learn a little.  At some point, maybe soon, I’ll throw up book reviews of them for you.

Spider Stilt on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall Haloween 2009- Photo by EyeSoarDance on Flikr

I also hit Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall on Halloween for the first time.  This is odd because I’ve lived here for almost 16 years and have always heard about how great it is.  The costumes are incredibly creative and it’s packed like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  The picture above was taken early.  From 9pm-2am the mall was packed.

Seeing the amazing costumes and running into photo buff friends like Stepan Mazurov and Jared Kohlmann reminded me that I have to get a great camera, organize my Flikr account and start shooting and posting more photos.

I wanted to see what would have been the 11th annual famed Naked Pumpkin Run, but alas, the Boulder police department threatened to arrest participants and charge them as ‘sex offenders’ so it was shut down.  Good clean fun wiped away by a misuse of power though no one was ever hurt after 10 years of this goofy spectacle taking place.

America’s hypocrisy around psuedo-morality and sex is annoying and laughable.  Utah (not Nevada, home to ‘sin city’ Las Vegas, which came in #5) is the U.S. capital of porn consumption arguably because it’s the state trying the hardest to be ‘moral.’ This list is dominated by ‘heartland’ ‘red’ states who claim to be more ‘moral’ than ‘blue’ states where people aren’t repressed.   Read “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” [PDF] and prepare to become enlightened.

Note to the religious, you’re not fighting satan, you’re fighting DNA and you can’t win.  People who aren’t sexually repressed (like priests and others following strict unrealistic guidelines of conduct that go against nature) don’t become porn addicts or child molesters.  Why?  Because they have a balance of healthy sex in their lives and understand that human bodies are natural we’ve all got one and we all come here naked,) not something to be ashamed of.

Anonymous naked joggers running by a publicly posted place on a publicly posted schedule are like Fox News and reality TV shows; if you don’t like it, then don’t watch it.

So anyway, this blog will still be somewhat social media-centric since that’s my biggest passion (connecting with smart, fun, creative people,) but it will have some more personal stories too.

My company is doing some great fun things that I’ll be mentioning more in the next month or two here also.  The thought of keeping up the new company blog, this blog and posting for Huffington Post (I’ve only written 3 posts in 6 weeks …a key factor in my ‘blogger’s guilt’) is a little daunting, but it will all work out. …and I’m not going to be carrying this guilt around anymore.