Blogger Health & Personal Brands

An interesting article in the NYTimes on the recent health issues of Om Malik. Om, for those of you that don’t follow tech blogs, is a long time industry insider and the publisher of GigaOm.

On Dec. 28th Om had a heart attack, and well wishes aside (I’m a long time subscriber), the combination of the sedentary life style, smoking and scotch (nah, couldn’t be the scotch…), are cited as causes to his health issues. The big kicker for me was the fact that Om is 41! Now that’s a wake-up call if ever there was one. Ouch.

The other interesting issue noted in the article was the stress to post when the blogger is the company brand. And while it was blown off, I think there’s some merit there. Personally, while I live a much healthier life style than Om, blogger guilt has increased recently. I love doing what I do, so I wouldn’t call it stress. At times it can be an outlet. But if I’m honest, and really think about it, when blogging is part of your business, it does change things.

The important lesson here, besides taking better care of myself in ’08, is to break away from blogging once in a while. I don’t think I have the nerve to take a Rob Hyndman vacation, especially with my company being so young, but my old vacation policy will need to be revisited. Perhaps along the lines of shutting down non-client communications and blogging.

Any other advice on blogging vacations?