Sometimes the best comedy doesn’t come through intentional humor, but through the back and forth emails, tweets, and SMS messages that fill our days. My good friend Mike Watson (@jmikewatson) was complaining about the onslaught of year-end recaps this week, and was making me laugh, so I asked him to put together a more formal list of reasons why people should not recap the close of the year, which, as he puts it, “summarizes a bunch of content that, if we cared, we would have read the first time.”
I asked for a list, and he complied…and I had to share.So here it is:
Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Keep Your Recap To Yourself
10. Nobody reads your blog and you know it, so you can write anything you want. You might as well make it a good story. Don't bother with the truth. Your truth is boring.
9. Ignore point 10, because unless you are a gifted, undiscovered writer, your fiction will suck too. I would recommend reading some real fiction such as Crichton or Clancy.
8. No matter how many cool things you think you did this past year, they all tell one story. You are lame! How do I know? How often, when you do something really cool, is your first thought “Hmmm….I should go blog about this?” Answer = never.
7. If you haven't read http://techprgems.com/2011/02/are-blogs-dead-the-new-york-times-would-have-you-think-so-you-old-codger/ then you wouldn’t know that the age of the blog is dead, so if you can't recap your year in a status update of 144 characters, you haven't summarized enough.
6. If you find that much of what your recap covers was also included in the holiday letter you sent to your family, get a clue. Your family reads it once, then tosses it out. And they are related to you. Get a clue.
5. No matter how good you think your content is, if I do happen to come across your blog, I'm going to skim through it and pick out the good bits. If there are any.
4. Were you as successful or awesome as you wanted to be last year? Yes? Congratulations! Then why are you wasting valuable time writing?
3. Do you want to be a writer when you grow up, and blogging is your way of cutting your teeth? I would suggest plan B.
2. Wait! Are you still reading? You really are lame!
1. If you had a hard time this year, ignore all previous points and tell us about it. We take pleasure in your misery.
Oh Mike, pure gold.
Happy New Year, Mike!
