The question I’m trying to answer is “How long should my posts be”, and the classic answer to that is “it depends”. There’s the question of topic, the question of depth, the question of time that I have in my day and the question of rigor. All of these fall together into something better described by a state diagram than a simple post, and everyone ends up with their own particular preference.

To me, fundamentally, the issue is about my audience, and what my audience expects,. This can vary greatly- my professional blog for instance is targeted at developers who are more interested in libraries and code documentation than shiny effects, while my personal blog is targeted at giving my community of friends updates on my thoughts and life. But even so I really have no control over who chooses to read, and in the world of community-forged brands and individual customizability it’s much easier to alienate a reader than it is to recruit one. If I post something someone doesn’t like, the ability to remove me from their RSS feed is just one mouse click away, but to find a new friend or professional reader they have to be aware of me in the first place, which is no small feat.

As much as I’d like to think I do, I have very little choice over who actually constitutes my audience. I can guide it in some ways: Promote the blogs in certain areas, structure my topics and content in particular ways, but without any kind of quantifiable feedback there’s no way for me to tell whether I’m getting any traction with the people I’m targeting. A great example of what I mean by this is some of the early online forum communities in around the dot-com bubble: A company or brand would open create the opportunity hoping (vainly) their customers would find it, and in one particular case a ladies fashion brand was entirely overtaken by a community of transvestites (I wish I remembered the details on this).

Now, for my professional blog at Practical Flash I can definitely talk about my own preferences, so that’s reasonably easy. Short, to the point, step-by-step instruction and the ability to skip between them for the particular item I’m looking for (now that I think of it, I don’t do that yet). My audience will understand highly technical talk and non-flash-developers will get lost, so there’s a decent amount of selectivity built into the topic. This blog however is a little more difficult. I have my old friends community at Livejournal reading it, a link from our internal intranet, soon-to-be a reference from the Columbus Adobe Users Group and who knows how many online communities, dating profiles and defunct online résumés with the information right there for the taking. That’s not counting family either; my dad’s a famous academic, and my sisters are extremely accomplished in their own rights- lo, the curse of a unique last name. Anyway, in short my audience includes old friends, coworkers with whom I have both friendly and professional relationships and past and future business contacts… and all that again for each member of my family.

The constraints this puts on my posts is significant: I can’t talk about anything work related, can’t engage in casual griping, I can’t say anything that might reflect badly on my or my siblings’ career (politics and social commentary goes right out the window), and have to keep everything bite-sized enough that I don’t alienate friends who’ve grown so used to my opinions that they just skip long posts, all the while balancing that against my natural tendency to be verbose, chatty, and fill my content with incidental parentheticals (how else to communicate subtext!).

So what do I write about? Well, apparently I write long articles about how I don’t know what to write about. How’s that for irony .

For those of you who don’t do physics, this is apparently a big deal in the Quantum Multi Body Theory world.

Here’s an interview with my Dad about his award.

And apparently the driving route is taking me right through the Allegheny National Forest. Awwww yeah. Definitely a stopping point if the weather’s nice, on the way there or back

So with that windup: This weekend was amazing. The whole thing, at least from the perspective of an attendee, seemed so… simple. It’s like all the world’s problems decided to pull back and show that even among their myriad complexities it is the simplicity of the whole that matters. Anyone who has ever been in a relationship can witness to the ebbs and tides thereof, the many problems and joys that come with it. It’s never the same twice, after all, and expands to encompass not one world, but the world of both persons. And yet these two worlds, the infinite mazes and possibilities that can be found there, are summed up in a single word.

It’s not the parts that matter. It’s the whole. And this weekend drew a thick, engraved, embossed triple underscore underneath that assertion.

For myself, it began with the drive up to the ceremony, an hour of open-window cruising through thick maine forest. The weather, the trees, the moisture in the air brought up connections to my childhood so powerful that even now I cannot truly perceive the importance of the problems I am flying back to face. My normal open dialogue with myself fell silent, the everactive synapses in my brain shut down, and I was caught up in the novel experience of perceiving nothing but the here-and-now.

That hour alone was worth the trip.

I arrived at the ceremony an hour early, end practically no-one was there. So I decided to leave again, drove around Ellsworth for a bit, and somehow the managed to maintain the magic. When I finally made it back I soon came across the crowd from THEM, and with much joking and commentary about the provided Heuristics we caught up and chatted. I’m afraid I might’ve talked a little too much, but then, that’s just me. For some reason, there was something relaxing even in this. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, had no expectations. It’s a different crowd from the Pittsburgh Gaming group, a group of very mature individuals whose lives have seperated, but who have still kept the social connections of Friendship. Once again, the simplicity of the word belies its complexity, and yet I was unable to perceive anything but the whole.

That experience alone was worth the trip.

So far, this post has been about my experiences, because the couple so far had not really entered into the picture. This of course changed with the ceremony. It was short. It was simple. And while I am a big fan of overloading on the pomp and circumstance, the noise of all the extras would have tried to construct an artificial wonder around something that needs no such embellishment. The message was simple: Two people, Alyssa and Konrad, have found each other in this crazy world, have found the simplicity behind the chaos, and wanted to share their discovery: Love.

It is amazing that we should suffer so much fear and doubt, for such a simple thing. It’s all well and good to say that it’s simple- it is quite another to realize it… and that’s all I can really say about that.

That message alone was worth the trip.

Regarding the reception. To say the environment was beautiful is… ignorant. Standing on the lawn and looking across the lake one can feel the pulse of memories made and cherished, a world unto its own with worth beyond imagining. Not only that, but here we all were, asked, invited, encouraged to help make another memory to add to that canvas. Right here, right now, the tapestry of life surrounding us, the strands weaving themselves into yet another simplicity.

This Honor, itself, was worth the trip.

And now, we come to the last part: This update. I would be lying if I said this weekend was fully consumed by deep, encompassing realizations. In fact, it is only now when I drink in the entire experience that I have made them. I’ve had doubts, I’ve had my share of bitter thoughts, I’ve even entertained spite for a moment this weekend. But the memories are there, and now they are tinged with joy because of this post. Because I have taken the time to step back, smile, and confront the core of distaste that is so often thrown at things. And in that confrontation, I have found simplicity.

And that, itself, was worth the trip.

Thank you.

Signed,

Michael