It is true that seemingly every second post I’ve ever written on this blog probably falls into the category of “blogging about blogging”, but I genuinely do feel as though my blog is either at the very start of a significant change, or that it’s about to head into a time of significant change. Generally, my biggest starting point for a blog post has been “what have I been up to?” So that at least some sort of record can be made of my life throughout a particular time. As a result of that, I do have a pretty fantastic record of the last seven and a half years of my life – accessible on the left hand side of this page for all those nosey people who want to find out.

However, I guess there’s a certain point where the whole public/private conflict starts to mess with my head. Do I really want a detailed record of my past up on a blog that is reasonably well attached to who I am? Do I want everyone in the future who reads this blog to have such a detailed knowledge of my past? I’ve looked to solve that in the last while through partially unlinking my blog from my real-life personality: at least to the point where my full name is no longer too easily found on the site. But in a way that feels like an annoying solution. Perhaps I want people to find a blog associated with my name? Perhaps the limited anonymity that I’ve created (extremely limited really as it is super-easy to find out who I am by having the quickest of looks through the blog and its associated website) is more of a negative than a positive? All interesting questions for me to ponder I think. At the same time, the whole “here’s what’s been happening in my life” basis for blog posts just hasn’t really seemed to work for the past while. Either what’s going on is fairly mundane, or I can’t really talk about it because it relates to confidential work stuff, or I don’t want to really talk about it because it relates to private stuff going on in my life that I don’t really want the world to know about. I guess I could always start another blog that was less about personal issues and more about “my take on this particular thing”, but I am sure if I did that, then this blog would become abandoned. And that would be a pity considering fantastic archive it has.

I do see a way forwards though, one that is probably most evident in the last couple of posts that I’ve made. I do want this blog to survive as it is, but I can definitely see its focus shifting in the future away from “what’s going on in my life” towards “my take on this particular thing”. And in particular, in Auckland’s Transport System and its associated developments, I have a pretty good blog topic that hasn’t been done to death by millions of other people (in fact a google search for Auckland Transport Blog reveals some pretty unrelated results). I imagine that there’ll be a few things that I need to change to make this work, and I still envisage offering reasonable insights into what I’ve been up to. I’m not a fan of blogs that just make links to newspaper articles all the time, with a couple of comments on them. I’m far more into ones that, while helping you keep up with the play, also are interesting to read and really give you an insight into a place or person. One of my favourite blog reads in recent times has been a blog specifically on the London Underground, which manages to keep a nice balance between links to news articles, but also with its own little twist on things. I doubt I’ll be able to create something quite so awesome for a fair while yet. But perhaps I’ve found a niche.

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