I saw this cartoon and my kids are not old enough to make this point, but I also don't tell my kids friends I am a blogger.
I didn't want to be a blogger, but now I can't stop.
The best thing about blogging is I get media status. The downside of being a blogger is people think I am media.
A huge part of my career was in publishing technology - fonts, print drivers, color, and apps (PageMaker, QuarkExpress, Photoshop). I used to take regular trips to Altsys, Macromedia, Adobe, and Quark to discuss publishing technology. I guess after all that time being a technical geek, I got the itch to publish and communicate.
Every once in a while I get asked for speaker engagements, but quite frankly I don't think it is worth the time to speak at conferences given I can blog on topics. I've had the scary task of keynoting in front of 5,000 people at a Microsoft Windows Hardware conference, and I've spent plenty of time preparing keynotes for executives like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
For all the effort though to prepare presentations, I would rather write a dozen blog entries or more in the same amount of time it takes to prepare a presentation. Thanks to this blog, I reach a targeted audience world-wide, and I know they want to read the topics vs. people are looking to kill time at a conference by sitting in my presentation. There may be dozen or two people who enjoy my presentation, but an average blog entry is read by at least 500 people.
One thing I know is my kids like it when I stay home and blog versus getting on a plane to go to a conference.
Maybe that's what keeps me blogging so much. Knowing if I write up ideas as a blogger, I don't have to get on a plane to present the idea. I can tell my kids friends, "I am a blogger and get to work from home."