Part of the inspiration for the “On Writing” series on ReclaimTV is an excuse to chat about writing with awesome folks. The other part is to explore the impact writing has on our sense of both self and community, a question that can be a bit more nebulous. Where and how do we connect with others and how does writing help both forge and reinforce those bonds?
To this end I sat down with the amazing Adam Croom to talk about everything from his failed 5th grade class president election campaign to the role of the Oklahoma City bombing in the formation of the OU Daily to vibecoding and much, much more. It was an absolute blast to connect with Adam and talk about the role writing has played in his career. In true blogger fashion, Adam already wrote about the episode far better than I will here, so you should do yourself a favor at this point and abandon the bava and go read his extremely thorough and compelling account of the conversation. I’m really glad he took the time to post about it because he absolutely nails the significance of our chat (at least for me) when it comes to the “On Writing” series:
We started the conversation with Jim kicking things off by highlighting my very first blog post on adamcroom.com about losing student council elections—multiple times—and writing campaign speeches laced with 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It was a fun way to re-enter the story of how I found my voice. As I shared, writing has always been less about polish and more about performance.
Not only was Adam a good sport playing along with my deep dive into his blog archive, but he immediately crystalized the importance of exploring the performance of self and the concomitant development of voice that’s very much at the heart of blogging. In fact, these are key points Maren and I were hoping to tease out when starting this series. We wanted people to see the value of blogging on their own domain, and feel empowered by the idea of writing as a performative act of discovering a sense of voice. Writing may be the single most powerful tool for connecting that we have on the web thus far, and to that end Adam provides a brilliant answer to the question of why write on your own domain.
While I’m biased given how much Adam and all the involved parties at University of Oklahoma helped make a fledgling Reclaim Hosting a viable business early on (Adam made me!), at the same time the willingness for a small, innovative group to try and bring a suite of online tools that encourage students, faculty, and admins to both own and manage their online voice is a hopeful vision of empowerment I still very much believe in. Blogging is ground zero for telling the stories that have the potential to connect us with that “unmet friend.” A message in the bottle, if you will. Thanks to blogging Adam became a friend and that is the story.
