Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void released a book last week. Freedom Is Blogging in Your Underwear is part manifesto, part love letter and part, well, I haven’t figured that out yet.

In my own little corner of the internet, I’m king and servant; royalty and commoner.

Image courtesy Gaping Void. Buy Hugh’s stuff!

The first read disappointed me. While Hugh’s first two books were great, this one was different. It felt like a complementary trinket to his art, rather than the completion of a book trilogy.

That was my fault. Hugh never advertised Freedom Is Blogging in Your Underwear as such. No promises, yet I had expectations.

In my own little corner of the internet, what I say goes. And I say anything goes.

I suppose I was looking for something similar to Jeff Goins’s recent You Are A Writer, a book about how to leap from an amateur to a professional while wasting as little time as possible. Jeff had a call to action, he had steps and he had a plan.

Hugh didn’t seem like he had a plan. He wrote a manifesto. He wrote a love letter. He wrote a thank you note in the only way he could: as a book.

In my own little corner of the internet, you see what I want you to see. Good thing I show a lot.

But since Freedom Is Blogging in Your Underwear arrived on my doorstep, I’ve written more for fun than I have in months. I feel better about my writing. I’m confident that the book I’m about to release has been worth my time.

Maybe that was Hugh’s plan. Maybe he wrote his latest book in hopes of inspiring others. Maybe he wrote it to inspire himself.

In my own little corner of the internet, I can be me.

Hugh thinks blogging is pretty important. But what he doesn’t say is what blogging represents: the freedom to express ourselves to whomever we can. It’s not that we all NEED a blog, but we all NEED a space that acts as a conduit for our ideas.

Digital makes that easy. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t value my blog or URL more than I would a physical piece of land, a substantial amount of money, lives or relationships that are important to me. It’s just a bunch of ones and zeros.

In my own little corner of the internet, we can be equal or we can be better than the other. One of us will earn it.

And they aren’t even my ones or zeros. And that’s what I took away most from Freedom Is Blogging; it’s not my blog, my own little corner of the internet, that’s important. What’s important is that I have my own place at all.

Freedom is blogging on my own terms.

What’s yours?

(Hugh is hosting a video chat today at 3pm PT. It’s free!)