It just occured to me- gapingvoid will be five years old in a couple of months. Wow. That seems like a long time.
It first started life as place to publish my cartoons [Click here to see the old site.]. Then it evolved into a kind of marketing, "Hughtrain" blog.
Then English Cut and Stormhoek came along in 2005 and changed everything once again.
Went from "cartoonist" to "copywriter" to "marketing consultant" to "entrerpeneur" in a few short moves.
I like it when a blog re-invents itself, my own or someone else's. When that happens, career re-invention inevitably follows in its wake. And to me that's what blogging is really all about.
Posted by hugh macleod at January 16, 2006 12:09 PM | TrackBackI'm already feeling more creative since I started blogging. My tone and content is allowing me to enjoy writing, which corporate life is slowly killing. viva la revolution...
Posted by: adam at January 17, 2006 1:04 AM>>>>>I like it when a blog re-invents itself, my own or someone else's. When that happens, career re-invention inevitably follows in its wake.
But that would depend on the importance the blog has to the person, wouldn't it? Not all of us use it for work.
Since I have been reading your cartoons since gapinvoid was months old, it is inevitable to think of the sort of person I was five years ago, too. The feeling is *always* of smugness at the old self: "I was so naïve then, but not anymore" sort of thing. If that is your case, the most important thing is never to forget that the Hugh of the year 2011 will probably think that Hugh'05 was this poor naïve little one.
Keep changing. ;)
Posted by: Nia at January 18, 2006 6:04 PMHafta admit: though you've not lost your sense of humour or talent for witty scribbles, gapingvoid was SO, so, so much better before you started using it to "market" with. Stormhoek seems to take up about 67% your blog's focus. 30% is meta-referentially hyperfocused upon This Blog Vis a Vis The Act of Blogging. I'd rather read about the guy who works in the stockroom or whoever it was you held up as exemplary of someone who's got nothing to say. The remaining 3% is what I come here for.
The title of this post, by the way, totally sucks. WTF? "It's all about your job, the rest is secondary" is an attitude that...well, like Adam saith above, corporate life kills. Now you seem to be enthusiastic about it taking all the fun out of blogs and making tools out of them for being more acquisitive. Suckage.
All that bitchery aside, I still adore your cartoons and wish to hell they were what your f'in blog was still focused on. But, like Blind Faith once sang with its psychedelic twang: "Do What You Like"...That's the rule for life and if being a marketdroid is what blogging's about for ya, well, have all the fun in the world doing it.
If, that is, you actually find that fun.
Do you?
Posted by: monde at January 24, 2006 5:00 AMMonde, what interests me are not the same things that interests you. Nothing I can do about that.
Also, I find your assumption that I wouldn't find the Stormhoek thing as interesting as drawing cartoons, that I'm only doing it for money, says more about you than it says about me, perhaps more than you realise. Interesting.
But thanks anyway for the kind sentiments. Even though you're way off base, at least your heart's in the right place.