During my downtime over Christmas I’ve been thinking a lot about the time I am spending on writing, especially with regard to how I am moving away from constant, daily blogging and toward longer form blogging whilst increasing my time on writing-based projects.
Between this and the pressing need to maintain my overall health – as a carer, there is no other choice; if I do not maintain my health then I cannot do my job – I am looking at cutting away those activities of my day-to-day life that are in fact excessive. A post from tones helped me see this ambition in the sharp reality that is text and I have never felt as driven to do my best work as I do right now.
That being said, there is no question that my decision to move away from regular shorter blogging is an important part of this focus; don’t get me wrong, the activity is brilliant and has been integral to my year-long rejuvenation thanks to which I am now well equipped to reach for my aforementioned goals. However, those goals are unlikely to be met if I continue to spend time with such regular blogging; I do not write about a specific subject or have a well established history of sharing via link blogging, or have any real access to the type of material about which I could write and thus gain traction with any sort of audience.
… and there it is. I want to make things for people. I believe the world is better when we all try to contribute to it and right now I wish to do so directly, with intention. This means posting my general, mixed blog is purely for me as a hobby, which again is great but for me unfortunately little more than excessive; a thing that has the potential to drag me down as it were.
And so my blog, this very site, will be for the longer form writing and that is fine.
However, there is still microblogging. Those short posts for which my favourite social media platform is named; Micro.blog. Everything about the platform is great… well, almost great. I recently posted my wishlist for the platform and have come to realise my main issue can be summed up in a word: friction. There’s just too much of it still, be it foundational issues such as the lack of cross-platform apps, cross-platform parity, or a lack clear messaging about how it is safer than mainstream social media platforms… I still wouldn’t recommend Micro.blog for the average person and so it is not quite great.
Then there is mainstream social media, specifically Twitter and Instagram. Flawed though they are, I have written previously about the reality that they are where people are; within contexts that are important for my life this is simply true and remains so to this day. There is also another thing; they are relatively free of friction, to enough of an extent to matter.
To this end, a recent post on Instagram by Federico Viticci caught my eye. He is effectively blogging on Instagram. I guess Instagram is photoblogging by another name anyway but I had never thought much about it also as a general purpose blogging tool. Yet there it is, again, relatively friction free.
It’s a similar story across mainstream social media:
Tap -> tap -> tap -> done. Boom; on with your day.
This ought to be one of the big aims for Micro.blog. Not necessarily as friction-free but much closer to that point than it is at the moment. I believe this is possible, likely to happen, and the true moment when I can thoroughly attempt to convince people I know on a day-to-day basis to give the platform a try as a replacement for whatever social media platforms they are using.
A lot of these thoughts have come in the midst of a deep desire to finally push on and maintain the momentum gained from a particularly busy year. Cutting away excess, minimising friction for hobbies and side projects, and thus making tangible contributions through my work is the path I am taking… as a result, I will continue to think about such matters as I have written about here, make the relevant decisions, and update my blog as I do so.
