I was recently re-reading Steve Yegge’s You Should Write Blogs post from 2005, and started thinking about why I don’t blog anymore. I used to be a pretty prolific blogger from before the days when these things were known as “blogs”. The archives here, in fact, go back to 2003, and although there is probably some pretty cringe-worthy content that far back, I’ve never deleted a single post.

So why did I stop? It comes down to a simple reason. As I’ve moved in my career from engineering roles into leadership roles, the topics I would consider blogging about have moved from systems and software to ones of organizational dynamics, individual behavior, and management’s role in facilitating the same. To properly write about these topics would require me to write about the actions of real people with whom I work. Although I would never name them, those folks would surely see themselves in my posts, and I’m afraid of being perceived as being mean when discussing everyone’s foibles. As my friend and colleague Adam Leff said, “No matter how much we collectively say we value honest opinion and transparency, we’re all still humans with brains capable of remembering what others say of us.” This makes it very difficult to talk about challenging topics openly.

Writing is especially tough in these partisan times. Fueled by hair-trigger social media, we are all too ready to jump to conclusions about the motivations of writers and ascribe specific intent to the choice of a particular word or placement thereof. We accuse people of “sub-tweeting” when they express their observations on Twitter, or label them as “toxic” on the basis of a small number of interactions. The halcyon days of 2005 Steve Yegge, where a blogger could just publish lightly-edited thoughts without suffering severe repercussions, seem long past.

I have, however, decided to return to blogging regularly. I will sometimes be writing about difficult issues, with the objective of sharing my experiences so that we can all learn and improve together. Yet I intend to treat everyone fairly and to be kind rather than “nice”. If you see yourself in these pages please try to bear this in mind. And since I have always spent almost as much time editing my posts as writing them in the first place, you can be confident that I’ve weighed all perspectives and I’m not just shooting my mouth off after having some drinks.

With that, onward. Next up this month will be a piece I’m working on in reaction to the New York Times’s recent article on what went wrong at Etsy. I hope you’ll read it.