Dave Winer writes on the web. I’ve been reading his writing and using his software for a long time. My first exposure to Dave’s software was with ThinkTank/More, back when I sold all my darkroom equipment so I could afford to buy my first Mac, a two floppy Mac SE. I’ve always wanted to be able to use an outliner, but for some reason my brain just isn’t wired that way. It never really makes sense to me.
The time I spent time with Bernie was yet another attempt for me to use outlines to help organize my thoughts and ideas. It was so easy for Bernie to work with outlines. It was amazing to watch him take my thoughts and ideas and organize them using outlines. When I try it on my own I just get lost, sort of whelmed at trying to take ideas that have so many different aspects to them and somehow pare it down into one idea and put in it the appropriate slot.
Then it was when Dave released the free Windows version of Frontier. As much as I couldn’t wrap my head around Outlining, I could understand the concepts in Frontier for generating web content. It was fun playing with UserTalk and when Manila started happening I could see that this was how I wanted to put things on the web. When work started on Pike which would one day become Radio Userland I enjoyed watching it be a music tool and then finally turning into the program I had been looking for to put my thoughts on the web.
I’m not a writer but since Cindy died I have used writing and journaling as a healing method. I’ve found many other people using weblogs for the same purpose. Dave mentioned one today, Brian Buck who is fighting for his life. In the long view we are all fighting for our lives, but those who are sick are fighting a battle against a more impending threat.
I was reading Doonesbury the other day and ran across another of the weblogs that I read. CaringBridge. About a year after our accident I found out that the daughter of one of Cindy’s cousins, Haley, was sick. She has Embryonal Rhabdomyosarcoma (ERMS) cancer. I didn’t really think about it but I’ve been reading Haley’s “weblog” for over two years. I would go and read with hope. Haley is a little girl and I so wished for her to win her battle. Like Brian Haley is fighting for her life. It is so hard to read about the difficulties and at the same time realize that the battles I fight everyday can seem so insignificant compared to the fight they have to go through every day.
There has been discussion recently about to role of weblogs and those that write them. I find it amazing to see the different ways that different people have been using this new tool for recording thoughts and emotions. Some are journalists, some are writers, and many are just people who have discovered a way to reach out and tell a story.