It’s amazing what a slight change can do to help inspire you.

For the longest time, I had been trying to find the right identity / personality to go behind singularity industries, and the saddest thing was that I tried to create one.

Funny thing about blogging, if you’re doing it because you like sharing your thoughts, is that it can call your bluff. Do you go ahead with a fabricated you, or do you stick to who you are?

While it sounds a bit narcissistic, I guess I’ve always had faith in my ability in this area, and it just seemed like the natural thing to make both personalities for both blogs, similar. And just being able to blog in my own voice again, is such a relief. It makes it easier to talk about the things I want to talk about without sounding like a douche.

In response, I will no longer publicise harmless? bananas! anymore on other social media channels, instead leaving this for my personal musings and rants. Circa pre-corporate life.

The new arrangement just puts me at ease, and the only thing that worries me is that I am retreating into a comfort zone, which in my paranoia means I’m lazy. But objectively, I am churning out more posts, at least for the past two days.. and if this is my necessary groove.. I should learn to accept that and not pretend I’m something I’m not.

So some small changes have actually become the catalyst to a new wave of content creation. Not that I can complain, and not like anyone will read this now anyway.

Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary, and also the birthdays of some of the friends who I remember. Well, maybe I’ll add to it, the date that the network is up! Yes, that’s right, the idea that I had been dreaming up has now come to fruition. Three separate entities for three different aspects of my life.

Why did you do this again?
I suppose it came from a certain amount of dissatisfaction at my own state of blogging. One time I would trying to be professional, giving serious commentary on the state of things, and another time I just wanted to goof around or be plainly cryptic for the sake of catharsis. In essence, my need for expression grew to big for just one blog. Here, I’ll break it down for you:

Personal
You’re looking at the personal side of my online persona. The reason why I started blogging on blogspot six years ago. A place where ideas such as this can be expounded on, constant betas, cryptic messages, a scrapbook of what makes the life of brian leery. Or as Daryl puts it, a ‘mee pok’ blog.

Professional

Singularity Industries

I had this idea, that I wanted to continue commenting and reporting on industry trends or maybe have a blog that has a more active voice and behaved like online media. I guess I wanted to bring a certain professionalisation to the blogosphere, and prove that bloggers are a valuable and alternate media source.

Public

Litford.NET

And finally the last piece of the puzzle which I just finished today. It’s a public self that chronicles all the things I do online. I’ve always been fascinated by lifestreams. I recognise that not much engagement happens on a lifestream, and that its more self-serving than anything else, but it serves the purpose of a public page. This page just acts as an aggregator of my online life, and will appear in my namecards or signatures, but I made sure to point you in the right direction if you prefer to actually read my work.

And there it is! I almost feel like I’ve been reborn on the web, or broken past the confines I once had in my previous online self. The beauty of this fundamentally decentralised idea (each site can exist on its own with its own audience), is that ultimately little clues point you back to the litford persona.

You know what? I probably can’t. But I’ve automated the lifestream, so that means this blog and the main domain will have have some degree of content, albeit lifeless. Yongfook himself lamented about the insular nature of lifestreaming, and he pretty much invented Sweetcron, king of lifestreaming software.

I suppose this leaves me free to concentrate on content for Singularity Industries, and develop my writing style. It’s just dawned on me, that while I do enjoy writing, I perhaps only enjoy writing reflexively. This however, will not do with Singularity. I think it’ll be a good discipline to add more objectivity or reportage to that blog.. and perhaps distance this blog from it too. Just so this can be my special little place to pen journal-like posts.

Okay, now that I’ve thought it out, it seems to make sense again. See you on the other side!

Ever since I started the original harmless? bananas! in 2003, and where we are now in 2009.. it was painfully obvious that the act of blogging, the scale of blogging.. or what it means to even be blogging, I outgrew my original blog.

The next step was really to get my own domain, but hosting a blog on my own domain doesn’t accomplish anything for what I’ve been thinking about:

Online Real Estate

Like some megalomaniac, I didn’t just want my own blog to publish on, I wanted my own network. It’s not a new idea, but I think in this regard, instead of having just one front, why not have three?

What you see in harmless? bananas! is really just one-third of the network I’m trying to build. It’s my personal front, where I get to be me, and blog in a style that is free-form, quirky, or basically a place I can make more mistakes with. Sort of like my own living room where I host certain types of conversations. I’ve added a mini-lifestream here, just for good measure.

The other two-thirds come from my public front which is litford.net (50% Developed) and my professional front, singularity industries (Undeveloped).

If you’ve made it this far, you might start to see what I’m driving at. 3 separate entities that are somehow still linked by a common thread. That’s the power of a network I guess? They’re little specialist areas that can tap on the strengths of each other, and cover the weakness of each other.

In my mind, that’s how the new entity of litford is supposed to exist. Not as fragmented personalities across the social web (different blogs, microblogs, social networks, media sharing.. etc), but as an integrated whole that shares the same name.

The other perk, is that I get hone my recently acquired skills in starting my own domain, understanding more about databases, experimenting with different blogging softwares and ultimately content management. The beautiful thing is that once I’m done with all the backend of automating my lifestreams and navigation woes.. I can just focus on the writing and producing content.