Matt’s Journal

I am quite heavily engaged in this social media hype machine, I profess to use a multitude of services that people will probably tell you you don’t need to use. Examples of these services are in my sidebar, which hosts a list of all the Web2.0 type sites I belong to.

The truth is though, the sites I do use are extraordinarily useful. Twitter and Plurk allow me to keep in contact with people across the world but also with my wife, who uses Twitter from her IM client on her laptop. I am kept upto date with the latest news by using sites such as Mixx, Digg and Delicious.

What I am trying to point out here is that social media has brought the internet forward decades from what it used to be. Gone are the days where you used the internet for just research and Napster, you are now able to update your webpage from your iPhone, interact with people who you have never met and build professional relationships that you previously wouldn’t have had any chance of initialising.

The main reason I have embedded the sites I use on my sidebar is so that you can interact and join similar networks should you wish to. I have an iPhone, on which 90% of the applications are communication tools, namely Facebook, Twitter and Plurk.

Wanting to boost my activity and share my knowledge and ideas of the internet, I put forward the writing on this blog as my application to one of the most popular technology websites; Makeuseof.com. Within a couple of days I was contacted by the chief editor saying I was successful in my application, I was to be added to their team of writers.

Fast forward two weeks, I have just completed my second article for them and I have many others waiting in the wings. It’s proving to be a very good way to slowly but surely move away from your typical 9-5 workday and move towards a career that would involve me working for myself.

I have a number of projects simmering at the moment that are only days maybe weeks from launch. I am hoping that I can get a second revenue stream coming in, meaning I can apply for bigger and better positions in the future.

Wish me luck.

After reading Sam’s post over at WhatDoIKnow, I also decided to vote for my favourite web tools and sites for this years Webware 100 Awards.

If you get the chance, let them know your picks from the different categories.

Staring a new series of guest posts on Matt’s Journal, let me introduce Sam Clarke.

Sam is the creator/owner/editor/lover of the entertaining blog WhatDoIKnow, a journal full of thoughts, opinions and general happenings, a worthy addition to your RSS feeds if you are one of the techies among us.

I’ve been blogging now on various platforms for almost two years, weather it be on a daily basis, or a part of a self-test I experimented with, to see if I could blog once an hour (waking hours) for an entire week. Now, of course there are all varieties of blogs around the net, from work blogs, to journals, right through to technical blogs… But upto until recently I had forgotten exactly the reasons why I had started…

This morning I was asking myself why I have such little creativity, my mind is like a well organized filing cabinet and I tend to not bother trying to draw or be artistic, just because I’ve always found it hard… I’ve always stuck to subjects with more reason to them, Maths and Computing for example.. But whilst trying to discover the reason(s) behind my lack of creativity, I stumbled upon an article.

Another way to encourage and increase creativity, is to write your ideas down. Keep an “idea journal.” If you do this regularly, you’ll notice that you often start having more ideas the moment you start to write. A so-so idea may normally be forgotten, but by writing it down, you may remember it, your subconscious works on it, and it can transform into something very creative.

This article suddenly got me thinking, perhaps the reason I had originally started blogging, was to give myself a space (a notepad if you like) where I could store my ideas, store my thoughts and troubles, then reflect back on them… Subconsciously, I had been training my brain to be more creative, so I put it to the test. The last time I drew a picture was back in school for a Graphic Design project, and the only reason I passed that course is because I already knew what my plan was, I knew what I wanted my final project to do, to look like, and I even knew how I was going to draw it out… This afternoon I started drawing, I didn’t really have any idea what, or why, but I knew I wanted to see if my creative blogging had worked.

I was extremely pleased with the end result…I won’t go uploading the picture, because frankly the image is irrelevant…It’s the fact I had (without being aware) managed to retrain my brain into a form of creative thinking.

Perhaps blogging, writing and general jotting are things we should all do? Did you know only 5% of people aged 18 and upwards, are classed as having creative minds? And 95% of children aged 5-7 fall into the same category… Maybe we should all spend a moment to write down those ideas we get from time to time, or maybe we should all write a blog?

I have always thought about starting new blogs and taking on the challenge of having to market, write and nuture it until it became something I wanted it to be. Coming back to work after the new year, I have put more thought into writing more, taking my blogging skills and using them for the greater good (just so you know, I wear my underpants over my work trousers ).

It’s more of a rhetorical question, but what should I do to start the ball rolling? Offer my services to different blogging networks? I think that avenue smacks of desperation and would probably leave me feeling very deflated when the blog owner finds out that all I have is a personal blog and a tiny semblance of writing skill!

To those who feel sorry for me, I can write for gaming, movie, tech, productivity blogs

Are one of my 30 RSS readers a blogger with ties to different blog networks? Could you shed some light on how you got started?

I’m not trying to be the next Jason Kottke and go full time, I just fancy using my blogging time to produce content elsewhere that would be read by a bigger audience.

Take the quiz!