Editing Life

Merlin Mann weblebrity of a variety of sorts, has outright stated something on his Tumblelog Kung Fu Grippe that it seems he has been bumping up against for some time and captures a feeling that I have had for a while now as well.

With this diet metaphor in mind, I want to, if you like, start eating better. But, I also want to start growing a tastier tomato — regardless of how easy it is to pick, package, ship, or vend. The tomato is the story, my friend.

This doesn’t mean I’ll be liveblogging a lot of ham-fisted attempts to turn “everything” off. But it does mean making mindful decisions about the quality of any input that I check repeatedly — as well as any “stuff” I produce. Everything. From news sources to entertainment programming, and from ephemeral web content down to each email message I decide to respond to. The shit has to go, inclusive.

Merlin mentioned recently that he has been reading Here Comes Everybody. A fact that I find interesting since the concept of applying some heavy reverse osmosis to both what we take in and put out as denizens of the web is not really within the core concepts of the book. What Clay Shirky does do is provide meaning and a greater purpose to the work that is being done on the web. The inclusion of the word “work” is key to the concepts here since what most of us seem to be doing is playing. We do things because we can and because it’s there and for the most part because it’s free. At the end of the day though, it’s about producing high quality content that is of value to others and contributes to this collective effort that we are all just beginning to figure out. The concepts here apply well beyond the web, so even if your are not the habitual internet app tire kicker that I am, there is a lot to the It’s All Too Much mentality. Enough that I think this falls into the category of being well worth sharing.

What does this mean to me? That’s something that I intend to explore and share here a bit over the coming weeks.

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