Prior to the past week and a half I had met only a handful of people who read this blog. It was interesting, then, to find that seemingly about half of my readers were at the AIME workshops/seminars! (Not that we're talking huge numbers here, of course, but still.)
Writing this now, knowing (a significant part of) my audience, is a very different experience to before. In the past my words just disappeared into the ether to be read by I-know-not-whom. The readers had neither faces nor voices. Now they have fully rounded personalities. And they're all really bloody clever!
But this is good. The reason for my writing this blog is not that I have such profound things to say that the world must be urgently presented with my words. I am not that vain (or stupid!). The experience of writing a public journal focuses the mind in a way that a private one does not.
And now that the experience is even more public than before I feel compelled to focus my mind much more intently!