So, What's New?
Mar. 23rd, 2021 06:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penpusherIt seems as though I have been blogging publicly on the internet for twenty years. I mean, it doesn't seem like it to me, but the calendar insists, so I guess it's true.
If you went back into my archive, the first official entry was listed as March 24, 2001. But that was posted at 1:33am. So my anniversary spans two days, sort of.
Twenty years. Two decades. One score.
It's as good a time as any to consider what the process has been, what I may have learned and what it might mean.
As anyone who has followed me knows, I began blogging on LiveJournal, back when they were an American company. Then, like now, I was working on a book. And then, like now, I wasn't sure anyone besides me would care about or even see anything I posted here. But that was okay, then, because back in 2001, I had been keeping personal diaries for a few years. I was used to being my only reader.
And it's okay, now, because I am cognizant of our circumstances.
But the fact is, writers need an audience, to motivate the writing, to engage the reader. And blogging meant interaction, feedback, conversation. Writing is a lonely art. Painters typically have a model or a landscape. Musicians have their music. A writer has the words and the page or screen.
My timing brought me many opportunities to try writing styles I had never considered before, and to improve the ones I already had. During this time, I got to be a fictionalized version of a talk show host, then I became a real one, myself. I began as a non-entity, then I met a bunch of fascinating people from many different places, even meeting many in their natural habitats. I got to compete in a writing "reality show" and nearly won!
The blog craze took off and soon everyone started writing, and hundreds of people were following. But as with every fad, people soon dropped it for The Next Thing. In this case, either to the shorter form of Twitter or the next evolution of internet communication - vlogging.
There is still something to say using this kind of platform, but honestly, most of the masses aren't checking it. In fact, of those people who are still blogging, many have been somewhat scattered or scuttled, on different platforms, blogging or not. I moved because of my aversion to a blog platform being run from a foreign land, with no apparent administrators.
How has this been twenty years??
The facts are these. When I began, George W. Bush was in his second full month as president. Today, Joe Biden is in his second full month as president. In some ways life feels similar, in others, more complacent, and in still others, more dangerous.
Have we, as a society, gotten any smarter during these two hundred and forty months?
The thought is in a single word. COMMUNICATION.
Communication is a big reason why I wanted to blog. I wanted to hear from other people. I wanted to read their thoughts. I wanted honest feedback, to get a sense of what worked.
But during this era, especially this most recent five years or so, it seems like we are not communicating effectively. We talk but don't listen. Our opinions are considered sacred. We don't have communities so much. And the platforms that are most popular have moved from words, to pictures, like flickr, Instagram and snapchat and onto video, like YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. Not a lot of talking or listening there.
And there is the issue of life getting in the way. Responsibility is something that takes you away from trivial pursuits. Where are those carefree days of Spring, 2001?
This isn't really a lament. But I guess I miss the me that could crank out entries consistently and not feel there was other stuff on the internet that cut into that time, and that my friends who also wrote were right there for me to read.
I think the ultimate lesson is we should do what we like. Don't worry about an audience when it comes to this, because if there is some sort of audience, she, he or they will find you, when the time is right. Or you will make your way, based on doing those things.
I haven't given up on this blog. But the elements that made it attractive at the turn of the millennium are mostly gone. I guess that is the part I lament.
I hope I can find new elements to make it work. There's a lot we still need to discuss.
My final comment in that first real entry is appropriate to state again, so I will leave you with that:
Feel free to ask me questions, I'll try my best to answer whatever ones you have. I hope you'll find the accounts of this adventure enjoyable! I'll try to keep you entertained.
But really, I'll mostly try to keep ME entertained, for the previously stated reasons.
Here's to the first twenty years of this blog... And here's to the NEXT twenty!
If you went back into my archive, the first official entry was listed as March 24, 2001. But that was posted at 1:33am. So my anniversary spans two days, sort of.
Twenty years. Two decades. One score.
It's as good a time as any to consider what the process has been, what I may have learned and what it might mean.
As anyone who has followed me knows, I began blogging on LiveJournal, back when they were an American company. Then, like now, I was working on a book. And then, like now, I wasn't sure anyone besides me would care about or even see anything I posted here. But that was okay, then, because back in 2001, I had been keeping personal diaries for a few years. I was used to being my only reader.
And it's okay, now, because I am cognizant of our circumstances.
But the fact is, writers need an audience, to motivate the writing, to engage the reader. And blogging meant interaction, feedback, conversation. Writing is a lonely art. Painters typically have a model or a landscape. Musicians have their music. A writer has the words and the page or screen.
My timing brought me many opportunities to try writing styles I had never considered before, and to improve the ones I already had. During this time, I got to be a fictionalized version of a talk show host, then I became a real one, myself. I began as a non-entity, then I met a bunch of fascinating people from many different places, even meeting many in their natural habitats. I got to compete in a writing "reality show" and nearly won!
The blog craze took off and soon everyone started writing, and hundreds of people were following. But as with every fad, people soon dropped it for The Next Thing. In this case, either to the shorter form of Twitter or the next evolution of internet communication - vlogging.
There is still something to say using this kind of platform, but honestly, most of the masses aren't checking it. In fact, of those people who are still blogging, many have been somewhat scattered or scuttled, on different platforms, blogging or not. I moved because of my aversion to a blog platform being run from a foreign land, with no apparent administrators.
How has this been twenty years??
The facts are these. When I began, George W. Bush was in his second full month as president. Today, Joe Biden is in his second full month as president. In some ways life feels similar, in others, more complacent, and in still others, more dangerous.
Have we, as a society, gotten any smarter during these two hundred and forty months?
The thought is in a single word. COMMUNICATION.
Communication is a big reason why I wanted to blog. I wanted to hear from other people. I wanted to read their thoughts. I wanted honest feedback, to get a sense of what worked.
But during this era, especially this most recent five years or so, it seems like we are not communicating effectively. We talk but don't listen. Our opinions are considered sacred. We don't have communities so much. And the platforms that are most popular have moved from words, to pictures, like flickr, Instagram and snapchat and onto video, like YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. Not a lot of talking or listening there.
And there is the issue of life getting in the way. Responsibility is something that takes you away from trivial pursuits. Where are those carefree days of Spring, 2001?
This isn't really a lament. But I guess I miss the me that could crank out entries consistently and not feel there was other stuff on the internet that cut into that time, and that my friends who also wrote were right there for me to read.
I think the ultimate lesson is we should do what we like. Don't worry about an audience when it comes to this, because if there is some sort of audience, she, he or they will find you, when the time is right. Or you will make your way, based on doing those things.
I haven't given up on this blog. But the elements that made it attractive at the turn of the millennium are mostly gone. I guess that is the part I lament.
I hope I can find new elements to make it work. There's a lot we still need to discuss.
My final comment in that first real entry is appropriate to state again, so I will leave you with that:
Feel free to ask me questions, I'll try my best to answer whatever ones you have. I hope you'll find the accounts of this adventure enjoyable! I'll try to keep you entertained.
But really, I'll mostly try to keep ME entertained, for the previously stated reasons.
Here's to the first twenty years of this blog... And here's to the NEXT twenty!
no subject
Date: 2021-03-23 02:25 pm (UTC)I've said it before and I'll reiterate it: Smartphone technology, IMO, killed blogging as we know it. A lot of platforms, DW being one, don't have the support for it so the only way to read anything is on laptop or desktop.
Many of my old LJ friends, including those who moved here, have either stopped writing altogether or have migrated to WordPress so they can crosspost their blogs onto FB. I wonder, though, if they get any hits from FB. One friend copy/pastes her posts onto her timeline. She's been told countless times that her doing so isn't *appropriate* because most people there don't have the attention span to read anything that long.
One of my non LJ friends had a semi successful blog back in the day. She's been attempting to return to it but is gobsmacked at the amount of self marketing now *required* in order to establish any kind of audience. Everything is monetized now. She, like you, just wants to write but she wants the communication too.
I'm here and still crossposting. I'm trying to post something every other day just to keep my writing chops honed. I do get replies but in no way like I used to. If I don't get any, of course I'm a tad disappointed but I just chalk it up to what I said above :shrug:
The friends whom I still have on LJ and who never moved here stayed there because there's more of an audience there, foreign owners be damned.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-23 08:12 pm (UTC)It's true that you couldn't use LJ or DW with any sort of ease on a smartphone. That definitely reduces traffic or potential traffic. And it's funny that with Twitter expanding their character count and permitting "twitlongers," they are approaching regular blog sized entries.
It takes time and energy to craft something worth reading. I'm dealing with that point as I rework my novel. But when it comes to a blog, you do need some audience around and at DW, the official attic for LJ entries, it isn't a space where many venture.
But I stated as much when I made the case to leave LiveJournal. We all needed to go, en masse. It was sort of like the Colonies breaking away from England. But nobody was concerned about Russia and they mostly stayed.
The other element I miss on DW are the communities. I don't think you can overestimate how useful and powerful communities were to LJ's success. Here you had a topic that attracted a cross section of the population, they all could post, respond and react to it and to each other. That was a major draw, and still gets people to visit ONTD. Though most communities are as dead as the blogs of the owners who populated them.
I know in my heart this is a Quixotic effort, which is why looking at my timeline is an effort. Ill try to be better about it knowing you're out there... But I do need to make a plan for using DW and not feeling it's a waste... Writing reviews was one idea, and I will likely continue that. But maybe the answer is in going back to the "diary" format? Of maybe news commentary?
I'll have to think more about it. Thanks so much for saying hi!
no subject
Date: 2021-03-24 11:55 am (UTC)I agree about the communities. There doesn't seem to be much here and most of the communities I'd belonged to on LJ are dead. LJ Idol moved over here in the hope that there would be more exposure. I don't think it got any more traction than it already had here. Halfshellvenus is playing this season -- she could tell you more about it.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-23 10:28 pm (UTC)