Tentatively Back

Wow--it worked. Long time, no see, Motherwhatnowredux. I missed you. Writing about social media has become about as interesting as...well, writing about social media. Which is to say, not at all interesting. I do it, because it has become what I do in terms of work, but it has also become what I am, and I hate that. I used to blog because I loved writing. Now I blog to establish myself as a "thought leader" and to enhance my resume because I feel I have to. I used to write like nobody was reading; now I know people are reading and every word I write has to go through the mental filter "what are the possible consequences of writing this?" What if my employer reads it? What if someone I work with reads it? What if a potential future employer reads it? What if I unintentionally piss someone off? There are so many "what ifs" that the fun is totally sucked out of writing. Well, of blogging--writing for the sake of writing has become something I do only in my journal now. Which is fine, except once you've been a blogger and basically written a public journal, there's something not quite there about journaling where you know nobody will ever read it. In some ways, it's good--after all, who really is interested in this shit anyway besides me? Since when did words only mean something if typed and immediately published on the Internet for public comment and sharing?

But in other ways, it's not good for me. For someone who is already inclined towards being an introvert, and to feeling like what I have to say or write isn't good enough, blogging has been useful, and turning away from it feels like a reversal of that progress. As my other blog has morphed into more of a soapbox and less of an expression of who I am and what I actually care about, and also as blogging has become something I get paid to do (I manage the blog for the organization I work for), it's become more of a chore and less of a pleasure. But that's blogging...writing is what I originally set out to do, and what I loved. What's the difference, you ask? Well for one, blogging involves worrying about the look and layout of the blog itself--the site's design, the widgets on the sidebar, the comment platform, all the crazy details that go into optimizing a blog from a web design standpoint. In other words, work, not fun. So I'm making a conscious decision not to worry about how this blog looks, even though I know it looks like shit. I'm here to write, not improve page views, or win awards for site design.

So we'll see how that goes...