I have been very enamored with the great frisbee bloggers and have always wanted to be one. My very open finals week and the holiday, combined with my complete and utter inability to focus on anything besides frisbee for over an hour, will hopefully allow me the opportunity to get all these ideas about disc out on the page. In addition, i want to become a better writer in general (yeah, way to wait until im almost done with school) - writing about ultimate, with The Elements of Style tucked under my arm, will help me do that.
I have yet to decide whether I should start a new blog for only ultimate stuff. If I do, i think ill call it "The View from the Breakside". Whata ya think? The tag line could be "Break on through, to the other side - The Doors"
For my first post, I want to have a list of all the great frisbee blogs that have inspired me. Here is what I got off the top of my head:
- Dusty's Ultimate Journal - followed this through its prime when he was updating daily. he doesn't post much anymore, but this was the blog that really got me thinking deeply about the game. This is where i got the deck of cards. He is the reason I got into crossfit .
- Jim P's - the grandmaster, author of the essay "the mental game of ultimate", a brilliant piece
- Matt Mackey's Thoughts - my current favorite. He is lucid, straightforward and clearheaded
- Match's- I always was a fan of high level ultimate. he showed me how to take my fanhood to the next level
- Idris's - just found it recently but he has been writing at a very high level (he is a pillar of Jam's offense) for years. The archives are a goldmine
- Peter Jamison's The Cultimate Opinion - he posts almost every single day. It seems Ultimatetalk.com is just a nice way to collect his posts.
- 808's - good thoughts, its clear he loves the game very much. great photographer, great thrower (he was a potlach all star, half because he has amazing confidence and poise with the disc and half because he hits on and befriends any and every ultigirl, especially BLU ) and great guy
- lastly, The-huddle must be recognized for bringing some of the best minds together to write about ultimate. what they are doing there is awesome.
One thing that has worried me about writing about ultimate is that I won't be able to communicate my ideas effectively, as sometimes i find to be the case in life, and will get frustrated. This, i think, is one of the reasons I haven't been blogging for the last few years (sorry LiveJournal) and I want my ultimate blog to help me with that problem, even if its messy.
Ok, im gonna end this entry. I think the links work but ive never used them before.
-break on through to the other side,
Pumba
ps-its always fun to stumble across an old blog such as kd's or this . learn your history, youngins'
1 comment:
If you go back through my archives, you'll find my writing was SIGNIFICANTLY worse when I started out (I've never characterized my writing as "lucid," and it certainly wasn't then. But thanks for the compliments). Long, rambling posts with little relevant information (a criticism I routinely got on emails to the team as well--I like to let the team know all the details of travel, but some people just want the place and time).
Studying other bloggers and seeing what makes their posts readable really helped me, as well as simply focusing on brevity. Lists are huge. Bold and spacing are wonderful and should be used judiciously for ease on the eyes. I try to cut down on my parintheticals and superfluous sentences, but usually I do it in flow rather than through editing after the fact (though I do do that for the egregious errors in grammar, etc). Sometimes it works, sometimes I still flash long and rambly, but at least it's progress.
Dusty's commitment to blogging every day was in part a commitment to that same desire to improve. Likewise I set a schedule for myself so I'd keep producing and keep learning (and most importantly, keep sharing). I'd like to think I've found the balance between the every-day bloggers (which can be a little overwhelming in aggregate, I think--depends on how much time the readers have) and the very-rarelys like Idris and many others who fall off the bandwagon.
Right, suppressing the rambling instinct, gets even worse in comments than in posts. Thanks for the words of praise.
Post a Comment