More meta

So rather than a blog about something, this is turning into a blog about a blog. The output has been more sparse than I intended. I believe I've mentioned that a time or two already. What's disturbed me more is the lack of additions to "On Topic" over there on the left. In the past couple of weeks I just haven't found bigger topics interesting. Recent posts support this--the mantel, windows and century plant. As I think about/deal with these regular life things, my interest (for the moment) has waned in more global issues. Even my leisure reading is effected--when I pick up an Atlantic or the Economist, my attention wanders pretty quickly and I don't read as much as I had intended.

Anywho, I actually have a handful of posts started but not completed. I have the germ of the idea, an intro with no meat, so they are, on the most part, unfulfilling both in terms of me taking the time to make them readable, or in their present state, being readable. It's not inconceivable that I just don't have much to say.

Technically, I knew that at the beginning, but that's one of the reasons I started this was to get practice at developing a thought. One of the blogs that I check in on had a post about the composition time of different types of posts. There were 3 main types:

• the quick hitter: a link or random thought for the day, maybe 10-15 minutes.
• commentary: longer, but not too involved covering a personally well known issue. still this was a couple of hours in terms of writing, editing, checking etc.
• research piece: longer term, added to here and there over a couple of weeks. at least 10 hours of work, if not more. and it maybe gets some outside editing.
  

My vision/hope/goal was, and to some degree still is, to do a fair amount of the second and an occasional foray into the third. However, i have yet to spend over two hours on any post--even the thinkier ones are fairly stream of consciousness, with a final lookover from Joanne. Spending the longer time--that's homework! That's why I'm not pursuing yet another degree--I don't want (nor I'm a currently capable) to do that anymore.

But personal growth is supposed to require some effort, and I still have plenty of growing, and, for the time being, time to do it. So the challenge becomes "doing", instead of "thinking of doing," which is a fairly big problem for me, from this blog, to home projects, to purchasing decisions, and many other things.

To conclude, the underutilized question to get comments is: how do go about recognizing and addressing the need or desire for self improvement?