I’ve started toying around with Blot, a Dropbox-based blogging engine developed by David Merfield.

It is a very intriguing platform. Simply save a file into a specified Dropbox folder and, voilà, you have a blog post. Blot allows custom domains and accepts a wide variety of files types, including plain text, Markdown, Word, images, bookmarks and HTML.

At first blush, it seems fairly extensible and customizable as well. Seemingly well worth the $20 annual investment.

What has me most excited is the fluidity of the publishing process with Blot. There is no technological overhead or friction to keep you from posting — from any platform.

I do have some concerns about Blot’s reliance on the Dropbox platform, but David has recently added Github integration and has hinted at a paid self-hosted product in the future. Heady times.

A decade has passed since I left the newspaper business and probably not a day too soon. As The Wire taught us, the newspaper industry in its current form is dying and many of the existing jobs therein are withering along with it.

In my journalistic heyday, I was writing tens of thousands of words per week. It was easy and I was good at it. In the immortal words of Biggie, however, “Things done changed.”

Writing is still part of my day-to-day life. I write at work. I write, perhaps too often, on Twitter. I write more emails than I care to think about. Despite all this writing, I find it more difficult with each passing day to formulate coherent thoughts and put those thoughts to paper/screen.

The only way I know to rectify this issues is to write. To push through the malaise and bang out content. That is where this site comes into play.

This site has existed, in some form or another, for nearly seven years. It started with the now-defunct The Meyer Files, which was created to keep our families in the loop after my wife and I moved 1,500 miles and a way-of-life away. The site meandered aimlessly for seven years and this is what it has become. Pointless, egotistical and not worth saving.

That needs to change. I need to be proud of what is posted here. I need to believe it has value. We all need that. To believe that what we do matters. That we matter.

Writing is something I once loved and the modern miracles of technology and a free society have given me the perfect vehicle with which I can rekindle that flame. A platform if not an audience.

Have said all that, here is what I hope to accomplish going forward:

• Create more original content
• Write on whatever topics pique my interest
• Write on a schedule
• Most importantly, write more often

Please bear with me as I set things up. I have some infrastructure issues to tackle before I get down to writing on a regular basis.
Thanks for your patience and please check back soon and often!