Wordle 2012 - Visualization of topics covered in my blog 2012

This year has been different. Due to my Triathlon enthusiasm and new job I haven't blogged as much I would have wished for. Here's a visualization (Wordle) of most common words used this year in my blog to give a picture what I have blogged about. I have removed the most common English words to give a better view to actual subjects:

It's quite easy to see books have been the main blogging interest of the year. I'm bit surprised that people raises as such a high word in my writings. I 'm happy that that there are so many positive words which are used often: goog, interesting, easy and believe.

Without the word "book"

Because book seemed to play such a big part of my writing, I did a wordle without the word book also to show the other words better. Here's the one without the word book:

This tells it even more clearly, I have been able to stay positive in my writings. I've tried to keep sports out of this blog, but at least swimming has sneaked in. Business and companies are there also. I would have thought that I've written more about experiences, but that's smaller that business for example. Design, which I do like a lot, is not even on the list. That needs to change for the next year.

Want to create you own?

If you want to create your own Wordle about your blogging, the most reliable way I have found to do it with blogger is this. First get all feed items for this year with this: [blogname]/feeds/posts/default?redirect=false&max-results=[here the amount of blog post this year]. Then select all text there and paste it to you text editor. Then you can remove something before pasting it to wordle.

My previous years wordle's can be found from here: Wordle 2010 & Wordle 2011.


Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review - If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland

I always enjoy writing. Even though I wouldn't really feel like writing, when I start writing, it always makes me happy. That was the reason I wanted to read, what was said to be the best book about writing, Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write.

It would be easy to state that the book is old fashion and don't reflect todays writing. It was originally written already in 1938. The style of the book and some of the writing there are quite old fashion, but the idea itself is live and kicking.

The main idea in the book is, that everyone is talented and have something to say. In the book Brenda tells in her unique way stories about what it is to really write from one's heart. That's the key message and carrying theme over the book, people will listen to you, if you really tell things from your inner self.

That's a message I sincerely believe. Being open and not worrying too much about what others have to say makes your writing much better. The book and my experience tells that it is not easy. There's always the fear of shame and critisism that keeps us not telling things as we really think.

I did like the book. It's not the best one I've read this year, but it's a good one. The message there is quite simple and there is only her words to take as proof. It's not a normal guide to something, but it's more of journey to be more honest to oneself.

It's bit hard to recommend this book to certain people. It's for those who already are a bit genuine enough to take over 75 year old book about writing to their hands.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield was a book I really looked forward to read. It had been mentioned as reference in so many different books and so many interesting people, that I just had to read it. Even with high expectations, but no real glue of the style of the book, it surprised me how wonderful it was.

The book is about making things happen. How one can truly follow it's calling and actually make things happen. It's a perfect guide for everyone to start creating the things you want to and stop making excuses why you couldn't be doing these things. It talks a lot about writing, but the learning's can be reused for anything one wants to do.

Most important part of the book is the explanation what is resistance. Resistance is the force is in us, that prevents us doing things. It's the rationalization, fear and everything else in one package telling us reasons, why we shouldn't do somethings. Everyone finds it in themselves. If they don't, then they have lost the game totally to resistance.

Book does tell also about turning in to a pro and fighting the resistance. Still the important part relies in acknowledging the resistance. When you learn to know it's there, you can fight it. If you don't learn to recognize it, you don't have the change to beat it. Such a powerful and cunning it is.

I loved most of the contents of the book, and in addition I loved the way the whole thing was presented. Chapters were really enjoyable and short enough with excellent stories in those. It really was fun to read. Couple of times, it really struck me with such a good insights, that I got surprised and even offended before I realized truth in those. It was a true self learning journey for me.

As a foreign English speaker, the text was bit difficult sometimes. I've been reading lot's of business/science books lately and those use easier language most of the time. I can notice that Steven Pressfield is a novelist in his heart and he uses more variety in words than regular business writers do. That made the book even more interesting to read, but it also did it bit harder for non native English speaker to read.

Book is a true masterpiece. I loved and hated the book at the same time. It revealed to me so much of myself, that I got amazed. When you want to achieve something, get this book to you hand and read it. It's worth every page.
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Old blog, new blog, this blog

I've done some changes in my blogging. I've quit my blogging project Lost in UX, which was focusing on customer experience, user experience and software development. I didn't have the capacity to blog regularly enough, so it's better to call it off, than do it halfway. I'm going to still sometimes blog about those subjects (customer experience, user experience and software), but I'm going to do it under this blog.

Most probably most of you didn't ever visit that blog, so I'm going to re-post couple of my best and most popular posts from there to here. There's going to be clear mention which of those are re-posts.

Also I've had for long time a need to blog about stuff considering Finland. Most of those are things that don't interest any of non-Finns, so I started a new blog in Finnish for that. Blog is called Toisaalta (toisaalta.wordpress.com), which means "on the other hand". If you are Finnish speaker, please check it out.

Thanks for checking these out.
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

One Hundred Posts

I promised myself that if I ever get to hundred blog posts, I'm going to blog about my blogging. My blogging started March 2010 and after first half year I started to blog much more often and I got to hundred in in year and two months.

I can't exactly remember why I started blogging. I've been following blogs for years and years, but never really felt like blogging. I first tried with sports related blogging about two years ago, but it never really got off. No one read it and I didn't really like it. So I changed my language to English and started to blog first about books and then gradually moved to anything interesting.

The subject in question

One thing I used to think a lot was a subject for my blog. What would be the key thing to blog about. Most of the blogging tips where saying that concentrate on niche subject to get more readers. Also most of the blogs I followed was one subject blogs. I tried and tried to come up with an specific subject for my blogging, but never did. Finally I thought that I rather constantly lose many of my followers because I blog about so many different things, than try to stick with one thing and then lose my interest to this all together. I've noticed many many times that I lose readers due to wide variety of subjects I blog, but that's true me. I rather be myself with fewer people than try to please everyone.

Why I blog

At first it started with this personal branding type of an idea to get more visibility if I ever would decide to change job or start my own business or something like that. Soon I found out that I like it and blogging came a true hobby for me. For me it's like hanging out with my thoughts. It's so nice to be able just concentrate on things I feel interesting and just be totally me. Actually I haven't even told most of my friends about my blogging, just because I want to write to web, not to some guys I know already. It makes me more to be me, because I'm not writing for any known audience. Again I could get quite many more readers from my friends if only they would know I'm blogging, but that's not my point at all, so I haven't done so.

Tips - or how I blog regularly

There's couple of small things that makes possible that I get a blog post that regularly. I tend to try to get at least 2 posts out in a week, hopefully 1-2 more. I do work for living, I have two small daughters with whom I try to spend all their wake up time with, I try to exercise 5-6 times a week and I use too much time watching sports from TV. Still I tend to achieve my blogging goals. I'm not going in details of my priority management, but my main points related to blogging are:

• Write when you  have time and energy for it. When I get to the mood, I tend to write multiple blog posts at once. Then I publish those later. I normally have at least one blog post ready for publishing. Lean experts might say that this inventory is waste, but I don't see any other alternative to publish regularly, since interval to find time for blogging varies so much.
• Always write your thoughts down. I currently have 18 blog posts with some texts or ideas written down in blogger. Then I have couple more on my mobile's notebook to be transferred to blogger. This way even when I'm not right away inspired to blog about something specific, I check my drafts and most often I find some post to complete from those.
• Follow inspiring blogs and web sites. I really often get ideas for new posts when I'm checking some videos or reading something. I do follow twitter streams also, but I'm not sure if I've ever got any ideas to blog about from twitter. Good old Google reader and RSS feeds, with proper longer blog posts with images and videos work much better to inspire me.

Thanks

It's been fun to notice that there have been more and more people checking my blog out and hopefully there's some people who really enjoy it. Either way, I'm not gonna stop because of too few readers or anything, since I really like this. Thanks for you too, if you really read this post this far and have been reading my posts some other time also.

I wanna say special thanks to Vasco Duarte, who is a colleague of mine, he's been (most probably he don't know this) a kind of a role model for blogging to me. In the beginning I was checking his blogging a lot and got some good ideas from there. I know he's been reading and commenting on my posts once in a while too, so thanks Vasco for that.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen