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Blogging used to be a lot of fun before we let robots data mine everybody & sell it unfettered. As a result, there’s less incentive to get deep online. I’ve been thinking a lot about how when I first started writing online, it was very unvarnished. Right now, it feels like when you’re writing to an non-existent audience, that you need something topical to relate about. For me, that’s usually about work.
Going into the new year, I’d resolved that I wanted to do a bit more freeform writing, and deviating into the areas of topics that I’ve long cared about but don’t blog about as much. Things like albums I’m listening to, shows I’m watching, random observations from daily life and such alike. This was where microblogging was quite helpful for many years, but the diffusion of social platforms makes this a lot more difficult and frankly, unsatisfying.
For years, the migration from one network to the next was one-half waiting for all your old friends to join in, and the other half discovering all sorts of new folks. That doesn’t really happen anymore, plus we’ve all been online too long and you start to discover that people you had friendly social interactions with — maybe even met once or twice — turned out to be different in their everyday lives than you thought and it makes me question the sorts of parasocial investments we built with strangers, neglecting the folks we walk past everyday in our own neighborhoods.
The post-covid era made me reconsider a lot of this behavior and I’m happy about how much more deeply I’ve gotten connected to local considerations in these ensuing years. I used to talk about how I thought I was some kind of introvert, but those days at home like that made me realize that 1) I’m not as introverted as I once believed and 2) I would not let too many days pass idly by without trying to enjoy things more, but also to contribute. I’ve always been involved in community pursuits, but if it seems like I’ve been more engaged in stuff happening around me, than my normal jetsetting shenanigans, it’s precisely for this reason.
I don’t know what form this writing will take or how frequent it will be, I’m mostly using the blog as an exercise in writing every day. It’s funny that I work out a lot now, but I write far less than I used to, I’m not sure I ever anticipated that sort of reality for myself.
