One of the challenges of blogging is deciding when a thought or idea warrants a blog post.

Often, I'll have a thought about something and it'll be months before it develops itself enough to warrant a 300+ word rant. And of course, most of my thoughts and ideas never make it onto this blog. This is either because I don't have the time or I simply don't put the energy into expanding the thought into long form.

If I have a thought that can be summed up in a couple of sentences, very often I'll simply Tweet it; Twitter is a great medium for things that pop into your head that you feel like sharing. Twitter doesn't require a lot of thinking, which may be one of the reasons why it's so widely used...

I think the challenge for many people that like to share their thoughts on the web lies in the middle ground: somewhere between a thought you can fit into 140 characters and a thought that is robust enough to blog about in long form.

Many people fill this gap by using short-form blogging communities such as Tumblr. They'll post photos, quotes, ideas, reblogs, etc. onto Tumblr to fill their "short-form blogging" needs. It allows people to share anything they want, without the 140 character constraint.

I've chosen not to use a short-form service like Tumblr. I like the challenge of the middle ground. I like the fact that if I want to share something online I have to make a choice about whether or not to Tweet it in a sentence or two or to make the commitment to flesh it out in a blog post. I think this struggle -- of whether to Tweet, blog or leave it alone -- forces me to think harder. And it causes the things that I'm most passionate and thoughtful about to bubble up and come out on these pages.