From the beginning of the Web 2.0, back when I joined Myspace and then Twitter, and then I joined Facebook, I took the time to post podcasts and news articles to them and to various other social networks in hopes of sparking conversation, or at the very least spreading information. After a decade and more of making this effort, with little to show for it, I hit upon the idea of posting the Nuzzel newsletter that came free with my membership on Nuzzel to the various platforms I was participating on. Just posting the newsletter instead of copying and pasting whatever witty thing I wanted to pass along with the article. That gave me one thing to post to each network instead of dozens of duplicates every day.
But then I got caught up in trying to author stuff for the newsletter as well as author stuff for the networks, and then authoring stuff for the blog on top of all that. Then there were the problems with Nuzzel getting the newsletters out on a daily basis. This seems to happen especially frequently on Sunday. They routinely miss sending out Sunday’s issue even though they offer to put things on the newsletter that they don’t send out on Sunday. Sometimes that one is the one that comes out on Monday. It has been hard to judge when, where and why the newsletter might or might not fail to be issued, and I spent quality time first trying to figure out which days didn’t get sent, and then I spent quality time looking at doing my own newsletter instead of relying on someone else to do that for me.
Sometime in September of 2019, I came to the realization that all of these things were distractions from the one thing that was mine to maintain. That one thing that was mine to maintain being this blog. So I stopped looking at other options for newsletters and I stopped worrying about posting anything to social networks that wasn’t 1) posted to that network natively or 2) written on this blog to link back to.
I’m going to limit myself to only writing for the blog from now on. Anything that I write, if whatever it is that I’m writing goes over a paragraph in length, is going to be copied here if not outright written here the first time. It’s my time and my art, my thoughts and feelings. No one is paying me for this work. At least, not yet they aren’t. Facebook profits from people like me engaging on their platform. The same goes for Twitter and most of the other platforms out there. They profit, and the blog is diminished because of my inattention to it.
The newsletter will no longer be posted on social networks (other than Twitter. -ed.) It’s not that I’m going to quit doing the Nuzzel news thing. I’ll keep posting articles to it because I find the newsletter handy for flagging articles that I might want to write about. For letting people know what is new on the blog. That is, when Nuzzel manages to get the newsletter out, and I don’t have to wonder what it was I posted on any given day that goes missing. The newsletter signup should be on the side panel of the blog right next to where you are reading this, unless this article is being read somewhere in the future and Nuzzel has finally ceased to function. (quick, tell me what the future is like!) The newsletter gives me a searchable database in my email inbox so that when those I remember…? moments occur, I can at least go troll through the newsletter history and hope that day got posted correctly. When the resultant narrative gets written, this blog is where it will go from now on. I’m done with proprietary networks to the extent that I can divorce myself from them.
I will be devoting myself to my property, my blog, from now on. I will still occasionally post articles from here to the social networks as breadcrumbs to lead readers back here. After all, if there are no readers then I’m just writing to see my own thoughts appear in text. I’m not that much of a narcissist despite what the Wife might think. But I’m done writing for platforms and looking for clicks and likes. I just want to tell you (whoever you are) how I see it. Without interruption. Without competition. Without distraction.
If you want to peek at what goes on inside of my head more closely than what this blog reveals, sign up for the newsletter. There’s always going to be something there that I just didn’t have time to put here, because there’s always more thoughts in my head than there is time to write about all of them. Always more words than there is time.
The wife doesn’t think you are a narcissist.
Poetic license, dear. 😉