I’m probably not talking about you, unless I am.

Ironically, this post is actually prompted by a real-world event in real time (I’m writing this at 3:10pm, and I’m about to hit “Publish”).  It’s not your business what post exactly prompted it or why. Yes, I said essentially the same thing to the person involved in an e-mail.  And suffice to say that if you think I’m being obliquely snarky about someone on the blog, read the last paragraph.

I’m updating my “If you think I’m talking about you” page (if you haven’t read it yet, you should) with two bullet points:

  • Many – but not all – of my posts are written well in advance of when they appear on the blog.
  • I often try to relate or generalize my experiences from one area of my life to another one.  This happens enough that it’s actually part of my bio on my website.  

Let me give you a real world example (partially because it’s convenient, but also because it’s such a good example and doesn’t violate HIPPA laws):1

  • All of the “review posts” were written about two weeks before I even started scheduling them on the blog.
  • The post about the “Old Boy’s Club In Writing and Publishing” was inspired by the events at my day job that followed after I wrote Get User Input and Print to any Networked Printer From the Windows CLI and Visual Basic.  I took the experience in my day job, and generalized that to the publishing world (because most of you are not here about my day-job adventures).   I wrote that post somewhere around New Year’s and scheduled it that week.
  • Obviously, I will bump schedules, write something in real time, and call someone out by name (hello Penny Arcade!) when necessary.
  • I don’t make a distinction between the scheduled pre-written posts and the “immediate response” ones.  The events in this post about playing Minecraft with my kid?  Happened two days prior.  The blog entry posted well after he’d gone home.  No distinction made between that two-day old post, the Penny Arcade post (written immediately before posting it), and the “Old Boy’s Club” post that was inspired and written weeks before.

I’m doing my damnest this year – we could call it a resolution – to say what I mean.  That means to be REALLY CLEAR when I’m being snarky – and avoid snark the rest of the time.  Which is kind of hard when you’re a sarcastic SOB by inclination.  But that topic should probably be it’s own post.

I’ll schedule it.

1 And before you ask “Oh, is this what prompted you to write this?”… please re-read this entire post.  I’m not going to answer that.