Micro.blog has introduced me to a number of new bloggers I would never have otherwise discovered. These are smart, intelligent people going about their lives in another part of the world, completely unrelated to me. Yet the way they think, communicate and share ideas online is very familiar.

A recent connect is Sameer Vasta — Vasta on micro.blog — a resident of Ontario, Canada. He claims to overuse the discretionary comma, a problem that I too, face on a regular basis.

Just over a month ago, Sameer celebrated 20 years(!) of blogging. His post to recognise this milestone was great. I’ve picked out a couple of comments that resonated with me. Of course, I encourage you to read the entire post.

For me, blogging has always been about thinking out loud, and about allowing my thoughts and ideas to evolve and grow, through time, out in a public sphere where I’m connected to others who are thinking out loud and growing, too. For me, blogging has always had a small b.

This approach to blogging throws down the gauntlet before me. I have a tendency to want my blog posts to be ‘fully baked’ before publishing. Sameer’s construction is to present blogging as a continuous process - not an end product.

I’ve begun talking about my blog as my “thought space,” as well, after reading a short reflection by Om a few weeks ago

As this canion.me site is new, I don’t have a defined purpose for it yet. I started it to satisfy a hobbiest’s itch. Perhaps encapsulating it as my ‘thought space’ might be a good use of the domain.

If someone asks me what my blog is about, now, I’m going to tell them it is my thought place, it is a conversation with myself and with others, and that it is my way of getting better at writing the truth. That’s what it has been for twenty years, and that’s what I hope for it to be for at least another twenty.

I’ve blogged in the past, previously for a number of years at twosittingducks.com (no longer up, and rest in peace Movable Type). Now I have blogs at blog.andrewcanion.com and here at canion.me plus a micro.blog.

Despite my renewed enthusiasm for the medium, I can only dream of blogging consistently for 20 years. However, I would like to think that the blogging I do from this point forward is how Sameer describes it; an opportunity to think and ruminate publicly and thus be open to discourse with others. That will ideally allow my thoughts to grow and develop, without being stuck inside an echo chamber. If that can occur, my blogging will be a more successful enterprise than present-day social media offers.