It’s easy to be honest when your blog has 14 readers.
It’s easy to write with teeth and say funny things that actually touch on a delicate situation when you have 10 followers on Twitter.
It’s easy to roll conversational hand grenades across the floor when you’re just writing for fun.
But something weird happens when people start reading.
You get tempted to play it safe.
You get tempted to play it careful.
You get tempted to soften your words in order not to offend. Even if they were the right words.
Fear sets in. Complacency sets in. What could be extraordinary gives in to ordinary. You lose your teeth.
That’s what happened to me.
To be honest, it was easier to write SCL when only a handful of strangers was reading it. When my picture wasn’t on it. When I was just shooting from the hip.
But then it grew. Then it got big and I started to protect it. I started to worry about things like brand and consistency.
So what now?
As we face 2013 down and our fifth year of this blog, what do we do going forward?
That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with for the last three months.
And I think the answer is we get messy again.
We let go of the sanitized ideas, the safe ideas, the easily digestible ideas.
And we open the gates and seize the day. (Newsies!)
We post more. We let go of the narrow definition of an SCL topic. I’m a Christian and like Lord of the Rings. Therefore, I will post funny photos from Lord of the Rings. I will withhold the temptation to find something deep and meaningful to blog about them.
I will post videos.
And guest posts.
And randomness.
And the truth.
When we do something whack, we’ll talk about it.
And laugh about it.
And start so many sentences with the word “And.”
Maybe you won’t even notice a difference. Maybe a post about how you’re going to change the way you post is the silliest thing ever.
But I wanted to give you a heads up that SCL is going to be different in 2013.
It’s going to be messy.
And I think that’s a good thing.
