I'd like get one thing out of the way first: I love to write. So when I was approached to write a blog for URC Control Room, I immediately and excitedly said, "Yes!" Or rather, that's what I stopped myself from doing. In reality, the invitation came in a big company meeting, so I put on my best hide your excitement and pretend to be professional face and casually said something like, "Sure, I'll write one."
In a former career I was a technical writer for dozens of products (one or two of which you may have actually used). Like many tech writers, I’m a would-be novelist who finishes books but never spends the time to find a publisher (horror is my genre, if you’re wondering—see the connection to technical writing?). I served as the author or editor of half a dozen newsletters. And I was the original Admin and webmaster of URC Control Room. Blogging here should come naturally, right?
Well, it didn't really turn out that way.
Blogs are easy writing. As formal writing goes, they're the informal form of formal. The key to writing a worthwhile blog is to be both entertaining enough for the reader to enjoy and informative enough to be interesting. I've blogged before, so I know that once a writer finds his "voice" for a blog, it flows fairly easily. If you're a writer, you know what your "voice" is. If you're not a writer, it's okay to think that "voice" is just another one of those stupid things artists and writers say to make themselves sound intelligent or inspired. You can gag if you want to—Go ahead, I'll wait.
Blogs also generally have a theme which is only loosely clung to. Since this is URC Control Room, it makes sense that in some material, implied, or esoteric way, my blog should have something to do with home theater control. And that’s where my problem started.
Normally, once you find your direction on a writing project, the actual writing part comes easy. The hard part is knowing what to write; how to start. I had this idea that my first blog post should be an introduction of who I am and what I do for URC. That makes sense, right? But try as I might, everything I wrote sounded like a formal, but desperate essay in the "qualifications" box of a job application. And believe me, I'm about as far from formal as you can be and still keep a steady job. As for desperate, well, I'll let you decide.
Before starting the particular bit of prose you're reading now, I sat down several times on nights and weekends to try to recapture the "voice" I used in my previous blog. That blog was about my wife's pregnancy with twins. My wife and kids cannot be controlled with any known remote, so absolutely nothing carried over. Every time I tried to write this post, I came off sounding like the description of your instructor for some boring home theater installation and programming class. Who wants to listen to that guy? Not me—and I’m him.
And then it hit me. Instead of trying to introduce myself through the stuff I know, I decided to let you get to know me through the stuff I don't know. There's a whole lot more of that, so that gives me mountains more material. And for purposes of this blog, the most important thing I don't know is how to get started. Problem solved.
So for today I've decided to forego the histories and examples of why URC decided I was allowed to come back for a second interview and instead focus on what a dolt I am. In the future I'll be writing about experiences and examples of things sometimes related to control systems. But for today, all you need to know is that, wow, that Dale guy likes to write. And he's willing to admit when he's gone off in the wrong direction. (Much like this whole post.)
That's what's cool about a blog. The wrong direction, most of the time, is exactly the right way to go. It gives you, the reader, a much better opportunity to get to know the writer (that's me) and then by attrition, you pick up some of what the writer knows. Some of it will be informative. Some of it will be entertaining. Hopefully a good portion of it will be worthwhile. But hey, there's no way to know until we get started.
I'll talk if you'll listen.
I'll write if you'll read.
I'll blog if you'll... um...
Let me get back to you on that, okay?
