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Where Is Your Passion?
I was a bit sneaky in my latest blog post over at SitePoint.
The post is basically a job ad for the technical editor role that we are looking to fill. But I didn’t want to just write the usual “We’re hiring, apply now!” fanfare. If you were actively looking for employment, then advertising the fact that we had a job going might grab your attention — but for everyone else this is unlikely to get you to read past the title.
Not that I wanted to completely mislead my readers, either. If you pull this kind of stunt too often, then people are going to stop trusting you as an author — and that means not coming back to read more.
In my post I theorize on the different types of people who are passionate about the Web and why they feel so strongly about the Web as a medium. Hopefully, even if you weren’t interested in learning that there was a position available at SitePoint, you might find these four categories of people interesting. The plan was also to convince readers that SitePoint is full of people who are this passionate, and therefore hopefully convince you that it is a great place to work. Which it is!
Anyway, if you know of someone who might be good in this role, you should refer them and win yourself a MacBook Pro!
Tags: editor, job, sitepoint, technicalLiterary Vanity
Is reading your own material incredibly vain? I’m curious to hear if I’m alone on this one…
Every now and then I catch myself indulging in a bit of literary vanity. I’ll be in the middle of something, and find myself following a tangent where I end up reading, and occasionally admiring, something that I’ve already written.
It could be a valid revisiting of something — an important email that deserves extra scrutiny before it gets sent, for example. But sometimes it’s material that I’ve written the day before, or last week, or even last year. It happens at work, with work-related documents, blog posts, edits on a book… and also in my spare time, sometimes with stupid stuff like a forum discussion thread. My thought process moves from “yeah, I really argued that point well, go me!” to “what the fuck am I reading this for? I wrote it, I know what it says! Stop wasting your time, moron!”
It’s ridiculous, and I feel self-critical after I’ve caught myself doing it. Especially if it happens at work (which isn’t all that often, to be fair — I’m usually super efficient and have no problem ploughing through what needs to be done). But it still happens. And it’s annoying.
I remember when Dave Shea released his Wintermint redesign of mezzoblue.com, he unashamedly acknowledged a similar vanity with his design:
because nothing beats the satisfaction of having done work good enough that you keep sneaking peeks throughout the day, when you’re supposed to be on other projects.
I empathise with being proud of something you’ve created, whether it’s pictures or words. I’m not suggesting for one moment that I can write as well as Dave Shea can design, but the sentiment resonated with me.
Now what the fuck are you reading this again for? Get back to work!
Tags: dave+shea, literary, mezzoblue, reading, vanity, wintermint, writingNet Neutrality
Net Neutrality is probably a term that doesn’t mean much to most of the people who use the Internet every day.
It should. Go watch this video.
Tags: fcc, freespeech, mediaownership, netneutrality
Matthew Magain works as the manager for online media at