Something different...

I usually focus this blog on the freelance content writing industry and some of my own projects within it. This post is something different.

My friend, Ben, has a blog called "Building a Better World." It's his take on "learning, growth, and development" and "understanding in matters of policy, psychology, education, economics, and other miscellaneous observations..." It's a truly fascinating read and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Some background:

Ben and I shared a very seedy apartment while I was in graduate school. As is too often the case among know-it-all guys in their mid-20s, we parted on less than stellar terms. After more than a decade, we discovered we were living in the same general vicinity and have been able to reconnect.

Ben has a unique take on a variety of issues and his blog is something of an attempt to take concepts and observations usually bandied about only in academia and to personalize them, discuss them, and to deal with them honestly.

Most of us spend more time worrying about cash flow, outsourcing, pending deadlines and how to crank out 25 articles about "stainless steel silverware" with a keyword density of 1.8% than we do about many of the issues and perspectives that really shape our world and our role in building a better world.

Ben holds down a real-life job as a special education teacher, but somehow maintains his energy and passion for these bigger matters. The result is often illuminating and invariably interesting.

I am not completely off-topic with this post because writing is really at the core of what he's hoping to do. He wants to encourage dialogue and inspire thinking by using his blog space as a means of grappling with ideas in his own language. You can find academics talking about Foucault and you can find people venting frustrations or making keen observations about their daily life, but you rarely find anyone trying to do both. That's what he's sort of doing--demystifying academia and stripping it of its annoying airs and using it in a real way.

So, it is an experiment in writing and ideas. Maybe it's the kind of thing some of this blog's readers would enjoy. I invite you to check out his site, see what' s happening, and add your own remarks and commentary. It's a refreshing and intellectually challenging yet honest break from daily minutiae. Sometimes it's nice to dive into a messy pool of big ideas instead of trying to figure out a way to use "cookbook recipe collection" one more time in that 500 word SEO article.

We will now return to our regular programming.