I’ve always been secretly uncomfortable with the idea that I see blogging as an outlet.  It’s a way to play with ideas in public – my creative sandbox.  So many experts I read tell me that I should blog with a specific purpose and goal.  I guess I’m still figuring all of this out.

This American Express Open Forum video of Seth Godin and Tom Peters makes me feel better about what I do.  I’ve included text of their brief conversation below.

Seth Godin:  Blogging is free.  It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it.  What matters is the humility that comes from writing it.  What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say.  How do you explain yourself to the few employees or your cat or whoever’s going to look at it.  How do you force yourself to describe in 3 paragraphs why you did something?  How do you respond out loud?  If you’re good at it some people are going to read it.  If you’re not good at it and you stick with it you’ll get good at it.  But this has become much bigger than are you Boing Boing or the Huffington Post.  This has become such a microblogging platform that basically you are doing it for yourself to force yourself to become part of the conversation even if it’s just that big.  And that posture change changes an enormous amount.

Tom Peters:  I will simply say my first post was in August of 2004.  No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging.  It has changed my life, it has changed my perspective, it has changed my intellectual outlook, it’s changed my emotional outlook (and it is the best damn marketing tool by an order of magnitude that I’ve ever had).

Seth Godin:  And it’s free.

Tom Peters:  And it’s free.