Ha! It's been more than three-and-a-half years since my last post here. Such an exciting life I live, evidently in avoidance of personal blogging. Such a large amount of important stuff has happened since I last posted, and yet, evidently appropriately, none of it was deemed worthy of noting here. Maybe that's because I've had an internal mental separation between publishing about personal things and living them.
Well, at least until Facebook came along.
The historic theme of this blog has boiled down to, essentially, not blogging about things. I'm actually quite proud of this and it's a substantial history stretching back more than six years. That's pretty significant, to keep something up consistently for that long. It can be hard not blogging about things. Don't knock it until you try it. You do? Crap. Well, one can dream.
I think the personal blogging trend that was trying to happen way back when I started this didn't catch on with the general public because writing, actual writing, can be hard work. It requires thought, attention to detail, organization, and some discipline. The popular social media venues, like Facebook and Twitter, allow quick, painless writing that requires little of those things. Facebook and Twitter, by design, don't allow people to write anything longer than a short paragraph, so the usual exercises of organization, flow management, thought collection, review, editing, etc., never come into play. I see this as both good and bad.
It's good because a lot of people just don't have those skills, and without the currently popular social media venues they'd never bother to write about things as much as they do. Perhaps the main alternative writing avenue would be email, which is usually directed at a single person or a few people, rather than for the broader audiences that consume the typical Facebook or Twitter post. So now people who would otherwise not broadcast their writing at all routinely write for bigger audiences, albeit only a few sentences at a time.
I think that's better than not doing it at all.
On the other hand, it's bad because people who do have, or might have, the skills to write longer pieces of worthwhile prose may be letting those skills atrophy or just not take the opportunity to develop or even discover them. We may be living amongst the next Shakespeares, but they may never be because they never discover or develop their own talents because they don't exercise the skills required to really write. They "post" or "tweet" instead, which is just not the same thing.
And I've not even touched on anything that has to do with paper. It used to be that when writing was involved paper was necessarily involved, but no more. I don't know whether that's good or bad, either, but it's certainly different.
So, there it is. Yet another blog about not blogging. When I started this blog over six years ago I had no idea that I'd find a blogging niche, and couldn't have guessed that this would be it. I like it. It's unique. It also requires herculean discipline to maintain the quality of the product. Or not. More like not.
See you in I-have-no-idea-how-long and maybe I'll have something to say next time.
Cheers. May your endorphins be plentiful.
Well, at least until Facebook came along.
The historic theme of this blog has boiled down to, essentially, not blogging about things. I'm actually quite proud of this and it's a substantial history stretching back more than six years. That's pretty significant, to keep something up consistently for that long. It can be hard not blogging about things. Don't knock it until you try it. You do? Crap. Well, one can dream.
I think the personal blogging trend that was trying to happen way back when I started this didn't catch on with the general public because writing, actual writing, can be hard work. It requires thought, attention to detail, organization, and some discipline. The popular social media venues, like Facebook and Twitter, allow quick, painless writing that requires little of those things. Facebook and Twitter, by design, don't allow people to write anything longer than a short paragraph, so the usual exercises of organization, flow management, thought collection, review, editing, etc., never come into play. I see this as both good and bad.
It's good because a lot of people just don't have those skills, and without the currently popular social media venues they'd never bother to write about things as much as they do. Perhaps the main alternative writing avenue would be email, which is usually directed at a single person or a few people, rather than for the broader audiences that consume the typical Facebook or Twitter post. So now people who would otherwise not broadcast their writing at all routinely write for bigger audiences, albeit only a few sentences at a time.
I think that's better than not doing it at all.
On the other hand, it's bad because people who do have, or might have, the skills to write longer pieces of worthwhile prose may be letting those skills atrophy or just not take the opportunity to develop or even discover them. We may be living amongst the next Shakespeares, but they may never be because they never discover or develop their own talents because they don't exercise the skills required to really write. They "post" or "tweet" instead, which is just not the same thing.
And I've not even touched on anything that has to do with paper. It used to be that when writing was involved paper was necessarily involved, but no more. I don't know whether that's good or bad, either, but it's certainly different.
So, there it is. Yet another blog about not blogging. When I started this blog over six years ago I had no idea that I'd find a blogging niche, and couldn't have guessed that this would be it. I like it. It's unique. It also requires herculean discipline to maintain the quality of the product. Or not. More like not.
See you in I-have-no-idea-how-long and maybe I'll have something to say next time.
Cheers. May your endorphins be plentiful.
posted by SHOboy at 4:25 PM
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