I read a story earlier today that “Gangnam Style” has become the world’s most popular/watched video with over 1 billion views. 1 billion.

This record will be broken again, no doubt. The internet has brought us all so much closer together. As technology continues to pull down the barriers that separate us, our differences will continue to shrink. Our shared history, from the videos we’ve watched to the stories that have influenced us, will converge. Perhaps the most valuable commodity in the future will be an original idea.

Many people describe themselves as passionate. It’s the sort of term we all love to put on our online profiles. But unqualified, saying that you’re passionate seems a bit meaningless. Passionate about what? Passionate about everything? Passionate about whatever someone is paying you to say or do?

Passion requires sacrifice. If you’re not willing to sacrifice in pursuit of your passion, how else are you exercising or expressing that passion? If you say you’re passionate about software, what aspect of software are you passionate about? UI/UX? Making the customer/boss happy? Architecture? When you have to compromise (as you always do), where will it be? If you’re truly passionate about UX, is it the last place you cut corners when the going gets tough?

I’ve historically described myself as being passionate about software development and programming, but in truth, there are various aspects of software development that I’m not passionate about and will be more willing to compromise on. I think I’m going to be more specific from now on.

Over the years I’ve had many blogs: Hut of eZainny, Waiting for Coffee, DevBerry. Despite having in some cases invested significant time in to writing posts, articles, technical content, etc. for these sites I don’t really hold any attachment to the content itself. Where I have posted thoughts/opinions, I’m under no illusion those thoughts mean all that much to others. And where I have written technical content, today sites like Stack Overflow provide a better medium for the dissemination of answers. So again it was without hesitation that when I wanted to change hosting and give Octopress a try, I didn’t bother migrating any of the old content from Earth to Neil over.

This might seem to be a rather depressing view to hold, but I find it liberating. The opportunity to start fresh is always exciting. And the truth is, I don’t write for anyone else anyway - I write for me. I write to help crystallize my opinion on a topic. To force myself to evaluate the logical jumps and rationalizations that can seem so right up in the nebulous cloud, yet so wrong when on paper staring you in the face.

Here’s to a new place to put things.

NB: This time I opted for a github hosted octopress blog, which makes for a quite geeky and fun blogging workflow. And I actually learned a little bit about Ruby…