Hiatus
Blogging used to be this sort of short form brain dump. My old site had posts that were three sentences long next to posts that were a thousand words. Not every bit of content was a treasure but it was real content and it was compelling even if only for that moment in time.
I remember sitting in meetings with men who created media, real media, expensive media and they’d ask me how I built my audience and I’d look them right in the eye and say, “I’m honest.”
Well, these days I’m still honest. I’m honestly burnt out and it’s my own doing. I’ve fractured my days and devoted time to Facebook to G+ and to twitter. Then I’ve taken what’s left over and put it here. Which means that here suffers and the content I’m creating is neither fresh nor interesting.
There are a lot of problems with overusing social media and one of them is a lack of real life conversation. I want to be with my girlfriends and be able to talk about what happened without them saying “Oh I know I saw that on Facebook.” I want to be more interested in what they have to tell me because I haven’t already read their thoughts on Facebook. I love Tony’s snark on Facebook but I really really miss texting with him and I miss our phone calls. I’ll have to settle for thrice yearly visits because our husbands don’t love us enough to buy us airplanes.
I’ve been frustrated with blogging lately. I’ve felt like I’ve been doing too much writing but if you look here the content doesn’t show that story. Sadly the content is living everywhere but here and I need to remedy that. I’m not going to walk away from social networks forever but I am going to take a hiatus, much like the way my friend Sean Percival did from his iPhone.
I’m ready for a 30 day hiatus. During the 30 days I’ll figure out how I want to reenter social networks and define them so that they work for me. Currently I feel like I’m working for them.
So beginning on Sunday, January 27 I’ll be on hiatus from Facebook, G+ and Twitter for 30 days. To prepare for my hiatus I’ll do the following:
- Remove Facebook, G+ and Twitter apps from my iPhone, Windows Phone, Surface and iPad
- Remove text and email notifications from all all three services
- Post this as a note on Facebook
For the FTG (Facebook, Twitter, G+) Free 30 days I will use some social networks. I’ll use Instagram but I won’t cross post. Instagram has never really interrupted my life. I may use twitter or Facebook to comment on other people’s blogs when livefyre or disqus requires a login however if it’s only Facebook commenting then I’ll use it but not post the comment to my Facebook page. In addition I may like Facebook comments here because… well I love it when you guys comment and if I can respond or like your comments I assume you’ll enjoy that bit of interaction. I’ll continue popping over to Linked In because that’s dull and dry and there isn’t a chance in the world that it’ll interrupt my life.
I guess Facebook has made itself inescapable.
This is a hiatus not an ending. It’s not a 100% vacation because that would be an untenable position for a blogger to be in. But I am preparing to spend more time writing here and less time creating content for other people. I’m preparing to have more phone calls with y’all and more text messages and less DM’s.
The only thing I know about this odd hiatus is that I’m prepared to be surprised. I hope y’all can bear with me. Now I’m going to publish this quickly and without editing because if just one of you reads this then I can’t back out.