For it's 7th birthday, I gave Microfamous a gift: It's own Tumblr account. Microfamously microblogging at its best, you can see it here.
There have been times in the past few years when I thought about letting my blog go dark. I lost my voice for a little while. I didn't want to say the wrong thing. I didn't want to say what was wrong. I didn't want to be wrong.
I remember how much fun it used to be, 2004, 2005...2006 was a hoot, and how much a part of me this little site I made just for myself was. It was my insomniac friend, my "go ahead and say it anyway," my little piece of the Internet where I could share snark and silliness.
I'm keeping it. Even if and when blogs aren't cool anymore, I'm going to be like that 60 year old lady hanging on to her Curtis Mathes floor model TV for dear life because THAT'S HOW SHE LIKES TO WATCH "MURDER SHE WROTE." I like that it keeps a history of 7-plus years of my life, reminds me of where I was when, back in the days when I still had to explain to people what a "blog" was, and that it's mine. It was my gift to me and I'm going to continue to use it for rambling and longer blog posts and pictures and musings. The Tumblr site is for the days when I don't have many words left, when my words have left me. This blog is going to be my three-day weekend; Tumblr is lunch at my desk. Also? There's an app for it on my iPhone.
Waiting for a friend at a restaurant for dinner? Tumblr post.
A weekend stretching ahead with nothing on my to-do list? Blogger.
So I'll still be here but I'll be there too. I'm all over the place and there's nothing you can do about it.
Showing posts with label technophilia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technophilia. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Twitter ate my blog...
No, I'm not really blaming Twitter for my slacking off on the blog posting. But it's just so damn easy to do my navel gazing in 140 character spurts than it is to sit down and write a blog post. I won't lie and say that the idea of shutting my blog down entirely hasn't crossed my mind. I have friends who did it and they don't seem to regret it. I miss reading their blogs, but if they're on Twitter I can still keep up with their goings-on.
It wasn't until I realized I was writing an email yesterday in "Twitterese" (abbreviating, leaving out pronouns) that it hit me: relying on Twitter to communicate so often not only takes away from my blogging time, but also that it has impacted my ability to think and write in complete sentences. I'm still writing essays, so I know I haven't lost it entirely, but I've also noticed that some of the editing I've had to do with my essays lately is different than the editing I did a year ago. A year ago, to get a 900-1200 word essay, I'd write about 2000 or 2500 words, then tighten everything to get my final, shorter word count. Now I write almost exactly to word count and during the editing process find myself having to flesh out sentences, change abbreviations, clarify thoughts, and basically translate Twitter-esque sentences into something that the general public will be able to read and understand. And I've been on Twitter for just about a year now.
Don't get me wrong - I love Twitter. I love being able to keep up with friends, find great links, find new blogs to read, and communicate faster online than ever before. I'm definitely a #twitteraddict. But if I don't keep up my regular writing here, I'm going to end up writing and speaking in 140-character bursts and completely forget how to express myself like a normal human being. Or a writer. It reminds me a little bit of "IM speak," something I fell prey to a few years ago myself to the point where (I admit this with some embarrassment) I actually SAID "O M G" and "I D K" (yes, out loud). I'm over 30 and shouldn't talk like a teenager. I blame my nieces and modern technology in general for that phase. And cheerleader movies.
This isn't an excuse or a promise to blog more often. This is the ultimate in navel-gazing: Me telling ME that I need to step it up. I still plan on Tweeting about what I had for lunch, about my puppy's behavior, about the weather. When you work from home and have little contact with people during the day, Twitter is like a group of online co-workers. But I also know I need a little self-intervention in the form of writing in full paragraphs. I also have VisualCV, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and my other blog for my book to keep up.
I hope blogs aren't dying. Watching print media take a dive has been bad enough. I still love reading blogs and my friends are funny as f*ck, so I hope they won't stop writing them. I've had this little corner of the web since 2003 and I'm not going anywhere soon. I'm going to keep navel-gazing, making lists of things that make me happy, rambling on about my lack of cooking skills, curing my social phobia, mocking family members (my mother hasn't managed to find my blog in six years, my younger sister still doesn't have internet access at home, and my nephew can't read yet), and bitching about politics, the neighbor's dinosaur that won't stop pooping in my front yard, how much I love naps, and my television addiction.
p.s. I was going to write this yesterday, but I was almost finished with Kate Christensen's "The Great Man" and couldn't put it down.
p.p.s. I was going to write this earlier this afternoon, but decided to give the dog a bath instead so she would smell like apples instead of wet dog ass.
p.p.p.s. You can find me on Twitter here.
It wasn't until I realized I was writing an email yesterday in "Twitterese" (abbreviating, leaving out pronouns) that it hit me: relying on Twitter to communicate so often not only takes away from my blogging time, but also that it has impacted my ability to think and write in complete sentences. I'm still writing essays, so I know I haven't lost it entirely, but I've also noticed that some of the editing I've had to do with my essays lately is different than the editing I did a year ago. A year ago, to get a 900-1200 word essay, I'd write about 2000 or 2500 words, then tighten everything to get my final, shorter word count. Now I write almost exactly to word count and during the editing process find myself having to flesh out sentences, change abbreviations, clarify thoughts, and basically translate Twitter-esque sentences into something that the general public will be able to read and understand. And I've been on Twitter for just about a year now.
Don't get me wrong - I love Twitter. I love being able to keep up with friends, find great links, find new blogs to read, and communicate faster online than ever before. I'm definitely a #twitteraddict. But if I don't keep up my regular writing here, I'm going to end up writing and speaking in 140-character bursts and completely forget how to express myself like a normal human being. Or a writer. It reminds me a little bit of "IM speak," something I fell prey to a few years ago myself to the point where (I admit this with some embarrassment) I actually SAID "O M G" and "I D K" (yes, out loud). I'm over 30 and shouldn't talk like a teenager. I blame my nieces and modern technology in general for that phase. And cheerleader movies.
This isn't an excuse or a promise to blog more often. This is the ultimate in navel-gazing: Me telling ME that I need to step it up. I still plan on Tweeting about what I had for lunch, about my puppy's behavior, about the weather. When you work from home and have little contact with people during the day, Twitter is like a group of online co-workers. But I also know I need a little self-intervention in the form of writing in full paragraphs. I also have VisualCV, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and my other blog for my book to keep up.
I hope blogs aren't dying. Watching print media take a dive has been bad enough. I still love reading blogs and my friends are funny as f*ck, so I hope they won't stop writing them. I've had this little corner of the web since 2003 and I'm not going anywhere soon. I'm going to keep navel-gazing, making lists of things that make me happy, rambling on about my lack of cooking skills, curing my social phobia, mocking family members (my mother hasn't managed to find my blog in six years, my younger sister still doesn't have internet access at home, and my nephew can't read yet), and bitching about politics, the neighbor's dinosaur that won't stop pooping in my front yard, how much I love naps, and my television addiction.
p.s. I was going to write this yesterday, but I was almost finished with Kate Christensen's "The Great Man" and couldn't put it down.
p.p.s. I was going to write this earlier this afternoon, but decided to give the dog a bath instead so she would smell like apples instead of wet dog ass.
p.p.p.s. You can find me on Twitter here.
