I’ve been blogging for about six years now. Mostly my blogging has been for me, an outlet, a way to learn to capture my thoughts. But over the years I have learned a few things. I’ve definitively decided that there are three ways to approach content driven blogging.

Experience

Many blogs fall under the definition of experience. People write about what they’re doing. All those blogs that my wife reads from other mothers who make fresh food every day using fresh herbs from their garden while their children play with wooden toys built from fresh grown wood from their beautifully manicured backyard. Those blogs are all about experience. You write about what you’ve done. These blogs are pretty capturing because clearly capture a story and they seem so clearly true.

Expertise

In my opinion these are the best blogs. They’re written by smart people, by people who really know about what they’re writing in great detail. I’m not sure I have anything to write from in this category. I’m not an expert of much…as a matter of fact I don’t think many young people are experts in much of anything. We’re too young to have a word of expertise in anything. What is it that Gladwell says, that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master anything? How many twenty-nine year olds have done 10,000 hours of anything?

Exploration

I like to think that I fall into this category. Much of what I write is not written out of expertise but out of exploration. It’s almost as if I’m putting things out there to see if they stick. I don’t claim expertise on much of anything, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to explore ideas and concepts. Even this blog is completely made up! I’m no expert on blogging…but I kind of like the sound of what I’ve written today. This type of blogging is all about pursuing an idea.

More than anything today I am proud to have come up with three headings that all start with an E. It’s a beautiful thing. Its possible that none of this is true. I mean, I’m not writing this out of a host of EXperience (is 6 years really that much?), I don’t claim to be an EXpert…no, I’m just a dude EXploring an EXcellent idea.