Half a year of writing posts has really been fun. I’m not sure if I’ve touched upon this before, but this is the first time that I’ve done this much recreational writing in my life. At the beginning of the year, seeing some of my friends persistently blogging toggled something for me. Having posting histories that spanned years meant a rich corpus that others could use to gleam information on what type of person they were / are.
So, what prompted me to make a blog of all things? While I do use social media, I’m not a fan of the restrictions that traditional social networking sites (SNS) have. SNS has increasingly emphasized content engagement through visual mediums. Look at Instagram: the entire platform is focused on visual elements with a very trivial commenting system. I’ve used it a lot in the past, but I’ve discovered that it’s not really for me. My preference is towards dumping text.
Beyond content, SNS audiences are geared towards people you know in real life. I don’t want all the people around me to know absolutely everything about me (or all that I show). What’s the point of that? A lot of the established relationships on these sites aren’t even that intimate. It would be no different from me posting the same content on LinkedIn. There are too many friends on Facebook I wouldn’t recognize in real life and followers on Instagram I couldn’t care less about. Perhaps it’s somewhat calloused for me to say this, but it’s the truth. (If there are people I know reading this, don’t worry – you’re probably in the people I care about category).
“This makes no sense, EZ. If all you wanted to do is write posts privately, why didn’t you just do it in a text file on your computer or a diary?”
That’s a good question. The reason I didn’t want to do anything analog is because I’m a man of technology. You can’t ctrl+f paper, or change the layout of all your entries with the click of a button. If my house is burning down, I’d be grateful to know that I don’t have to rescue an irrecoverable journal. Just writing down posts on paper would definitely be cheaper than hosting a site just for this, but I do think that the value it gives me is worth the price I pay to maintain the site. Plus, the ability to access my site from any device I own makes it really easy to complete a train of thought by putting it down.
Many of my friends boldly include links to their blogs in their bios. I don’t think I would do that in the foreseeable future, but who knows how my mentality may change. Even if I like being a private person, it doesn’t mean that I’m afraid of people reading these posts. I want to leave them on the internet, in case anyone else in the room thinks what I have to write about is interesting in some capacity.
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