One of the hazards I have right now is trying to be all things to all people: do all the speeches, write all the columns and Esquire articles, do the media stuff, write the blog--oh, and help Steve manage the company while it grows explosively.
Then's there's the next book, the house, the marriage, the four kids (high school, junior high, primary and preschool) and the upcoming interview for the next hoped-for adoption.
Then there's having a home where you do no work, although you work at home when you're there.
Then there's the occasional parental helping-out, both sides.
Then there's trying to stay in shape.
Then there's just still being in love with Vonne the person and wanting to spend time with her.
Then there's everyone sending you emails, expecting responses--sometimes personal tutorials!
Sorry.
Being on vacation lets you hang out like that.
Anyway . . .
The back and forth with RKKA (who's clearly an angrier guy than I can manage on my sked, though I have my moments) represents one of those efforts (and there are so many) when both pissed-off and helpful readers shove things your way and pretty much demand you reply to it (like it's your job to reply to everything going on in the world), and while you don't want to get into that pointless "commenting" role that I eschew on MSM venues (I prefer to go on only to talk about my stuff/articles/ideas versus just chattering about current events because, when I do, it just feels like another asshole with an opinion, so why bother?), you try to accommodate all this demand without angering your family too much.
But I mean, it's not like you have the time a lot of these people seem to have to craft these super-long emails where they go on and on (often getting cut off by my Treo's character limit--always a bad sign), so you do your best to reply and deal with what they're coming at you about.
Call it retail strategizing.
When you do this, you're cutting intellectual corners by definition, because time isn't infinite. Most of this stuff I type in so fast, you simply wouldn't believe it--even on my Treo.
So the fine points often get mangled, even if the gist and thrust are dead on.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: All of the preceding text is what we here at Thomas P.M. Barnett Weblog like to call, "pre-writing." It's just a little thing we like to do to give you, the reader, the illusion that Tom's actually just cranking this stuff out with really no filter whatsoever--not even his Catholic upbringing! None of this stuff can be found in the blog 90 days post-posting. We edit it out to preserve a more professional tone for our archives, and to save Tom from embarrassing questions at some future Congressional hearing [Sean here: Will somebody down at research pull a nice quote from somebody well known on that point and insert here prior to final proofing?]. Now, on to the real purpose of this blog post, which we on the staff really think is smashingly good.]
Charles Ganske in his excellent and where-does-he-find-the-time post on Russia Blog (I mean, Jesus! His blog posts seem fancier than my articles! And doesn't it seem a bit much when people quote my blog so solemnly? And then there's commenting on my tone . . . to which I reply, Fuck off! ITSABLOG man! Not the Goddamn Congressional Record [he types in furiously, overdoing the profanity to drive his point home]) does a nice treatment of the subject at hand, being both fair and polite to me--even in his justified criticism--and so moves the ball and the conversation along nicely.
This, to me, is how the blogosphere should work--especially for professionals like me for whom the blog is really a web-based intellectual and career diary and not what so many slick ones have become recently: you know, a lot more professional and calculating and thorough and careful.
All of that's good, and Russia Blog is a great example of it (if it's not on my blogroll, Sean, then . . . ). Too much of the blogosphere is full of know-somethings acting like really-done-somethings (although that changes as writing blogs seems de riguer for so many really-doing-somethings in so many fields), and that can grate those of us who are both professionals in their field and--in effect--what is now old-school bloggers (meaning there's really something of ourselves in the blog, not just polished output).
My blog is so amazingly real-time for me, with almost no forethought, meaning I just pour it out from my ongoing work and thinking. As blogs get more collectivist and professional, that sort of from-the-gut and off-the-cuff writing gets easier to attack and criticize, and I can easily imagine that process reaching the point where I'm still writing my blog like we're sitting at a bar with two nice martinis between us and I'm just talking my way out of my professional/personal day with you, but that style ends up getting slammed all the time by the more corporatizing blogosphere (to include the zealots who spend way too much time online) so that I start dulling up my own blog, watching my words, getting more confidential (inevitable) and so on.
And I would find that outcome sad, not just for me (fuck'em all if they can't take a joke now and then) but for the blogosphere as a whole, because I'd foresee a straight split between the professional blogs and the personal ones, with the former taking things too seriously and the latter not seriously enough (discourse is valuable, no matter what the impetus).
Why say all this?
I was just impressed by Ganske's well-reasoned and reasonably polite way of correcting my posts. I have no idea who he is. I mean, the guy uses that "we here at Russia blog" tone that apes the NYT a bit too much for my taste ("Oh yeah! Well, I here at the Thomas P.M. Barnett blog will be sure to raise this with myself the next time I take a really long shower, so there!").
Still, that's how to deal with guys like me without ruining guys like me (I mean, shit! Here I am in this vacation house with everyone lights out and I'm bothering to write this!). And yeah, I really appreciate that, even if this post never would have happened without Ganske sending me this superserious email about his post, with his "maybe you want to comment on it" suggestion (if I had a nickel for every one of those emails I get daily . . . Randy Moss would be a Packer!).
But to wrap up this long post, which I labored over for several hours, running past several colleagues for their comments and getting Sean out of bed to do a style edit: read Ganske's nice post. I found it illuminating.
You know, wouldn't it be cool to just issue a standard press statement everytime someone quotes my blog that reads:
Pressed for comment, a representative of Thomas P.M. Barnett Weblog replied, "It's just his fucking blog, man! Call him up if you want a more dignified quote. I ain't the boss of him!"
Oh, already I feel like I shouldn't have typed that.
Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 7:43PM 
