Reading Bloggers from Start to Finish

October 9, 2011

Every once in awhile, I get really obsessed with the work of someone with a blog. So much so, that I read their blog from start to finish over the course of a few days without taking much of a break.

Recently, I started reading Penelope Trunk's blog obsessively from start to finish. Why? Because there's something about her writing that eerily reminds me of myself. In some ways, I admire her brutal honesty about nearly everything. I know that I have the capacity to do the same thing, because I have. The question in my mind: is there a way to be as honest as Penelope Trunk, without communicating so violently?

Last year, I got really obsessed with Derek Sivers. I got so obsessed that I read his entire blog in reverse chronological order from finish to start. I learned so much doing this, I definitely suggest it. What I appreciate about Derek is that he only writes things that he understands completely. It seems to me like he'd rather wait a long time than publish something that's unprocessed and/or raw. He also only does things if he's Hell, Yeah! about them.

The year before that, I got really obsessed with Seth Godin. So much so in fact, that I read his entire blog from start to finish in chronological order. While I was obsessively reading his entire blog, I also read almost all of his books. One of the most important lessons I learned from reading Seth is how to code SEO into language. Purple Cow. Linchpin. Tribes. (and even Meatball Sundae...?) These are all words that we use because of Seth. Seth's a creator of new google-able language.

There are other bloggers I've read from start to finish obsessively. I'm not mentioning them here, because they're not as good. It takes a lot of work and life-experience to write a blog that I'll obsessively read from start to finish.

The saddest part of reading a blog from start to finish is that once I'm done I have to wait for new blog posts in order to get my fill. Luckily, there's a lot of work for me to do in-between obsessively reading brilliant bloggers.