Favorite Blogs of 2009

My favorite blogs of 2009; the sig­nals amongst the noise that taught me new things, made me think dif­fer­ent, and made me want to write bet­ter.

43 Fold­ers

To me, Mer­lin Mann is the san­est voice in all of pro­duc­tiv­ity blog­ging (well, most times). He pointed out that if you’re spend­ing a lot of time read­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity blogs about how to be more pro­duc­tive, you really just need to get your ass back to work. Amen. I love this man’s hon­esty and the way he writes; funny, con­ver­sa­tional and chocked full of thought.

Try Real Advice Hurts, The Prob­lem with “Feel­ing Cre­ative”, and NaNoW­riMo: A Pep Talk and a Warn­ing. If you have 37 min­utes and 22 sec­onds, watch Make­be­lieve Help, Old Butch­ers, and Fig­ur­ing Out Who You Are (For Now). Long, but awesome.

Chi­ron

Rory Miller wrote the excel­lent Med­i­ta­tions on Vio­lence: A Com­par­i­son of Mar­tial Arts Train­ing & Real World Vio­lence and Chi­ron is his per­sonal blog. It’s not always an easy read, he writes about aspects of vio­lence and psy­chol­ogy that I think most of us liv­ing in cosy, peace­ful lives don’t want to know about. But it’s real, and it opens my eyes. He recently wrote that “Chi­ron isn’t about grow­ing read­er­ship and I’m not writ­ing for you. We all know that.” I love that. Iron­i­cally, I think that com­mit­ment to hon­esty on his part is what dri­ves peo­ple to read his blog anyway.

Try Teach­ing for Chaos, Glitches and Denial, All In, Through the Look­ing Class and Caveat Lec­tor (Four-Way Break­down for mar­tial artists).

Gap­ing Void

For a while there, I thought Hugh had lost it – a lot of his posts early in the year seemed to be all about sell­ing his prints. Not a bad thing mind you, I’m happy to see him doing well, but I missed his kick-ass car­toons and writ­ing. I shouldn’t have wor­ried, because he’s back in full-force, and remains in my must-read list.

Try “Evil plans” are not prod­ucts. “Evil plans” are gifts, “Fight like hell. This is it.” and More thoughts on “evil plans”. If you like his work, grab a copy of his book Ignore Every­body: and 39 Other Keys to Cre­ativ­ity (my review here).

Rands in Repose

When­ever I read some­thing that Rands wrote I feel inspired, because I want to write like him, and depressed, because I don’t write like him. His reflec­tions on the tech life are spot on (you really need to read The Nerd Hand­book if you own one), but he also writes on var­ied top­ics like man­age­ment, work life and creativity.

Try The Mak­ers of Things, Up to Noth­ing and The Art of the Tweet.

Per­sonal Devel­op­ment for Smart People

Which list about favorite blogs from any self-respecting (even semi) per­sonal growth blog wouldn’t include The Steve? He’s become the poster child for per­sonal devel­op­ment blog­ging mad suc­cess. Sure, some of his stuff is a lit­tle too new age-y for me, but you know what? He’s hon­est, orig­i­nal, and I learn from him. Com­pared to a lot of other per­sonal growth blog­gers, Steve’s oper­at­ing on a whole dif­fer­ent level, and I still look for­ward to his new posts.

Try How to Make Lots of Money Dur­ing a Reces­sion, How to Be a Man and Cre­at­ing Abun­dance (video).

Pix­e­lated Image

David duChemin wrote Within the Frame: The Jour­ney of Pho­to­graphic Vision, a book I love lots and credit for rais­ing my game when I went shoot­ing pho­tographs in Tokyo this past autumn. His blog is full of real-world, prac­ti­cal and inspi­ra­tional advice from some­one who’s gone from bank­ruptcy to com­mer­cial suc­cess, great not just for pho­tog­ra­phers, but for any­one liv­ing the cre­ative life. His blog isn’t new, but it’s my favorite find of 2009.

Try Credit Where Credit is Due. Or Not, Woulda — Shoulda — Coulda? and Just?

The Blog that Ate Mind Chatter

Bill Har­ris’ blog posts are really long, but worth read­ing all the way through. Less the motivational-type posts about how to suc­ceed, make mil­lions and triple your sex life, The Blog that Ate Mind Chat­ter deals with big­ger ques­tions like the mean­ing of life, and how to nav­i­gate sanely through this one lim­ited life from a larger spir­i­tual per­spec­tive that’s very Bud­dhist (the phi­los­o­phy, not the religion).

Try News Flash: There’s No Escape, It’s All about Aware­ness and Where are you going? And Why? (Pre­tend­ing like crazy that what you’re doing really matters.)

Updated: Included Bill Har­ris’ The Blog that Ate Mind Chat­ter in the list.