Dusting off this blog again for #blogjune.
If you’ve come here wanting to sign up, welcome! …And go to Peta’s blog for the instructions. Of course, you don’t have to sign up at all, just blog 😉
Every year, in June, I ponder how blogging’s changed for me. How I once found it a very simple task to blog, practically daily. Now, in time for this annual event, I found myself wondering what I would blog about, how I would fit it in.
My social media routines keep changing. Usually I don’t even really notice until they’ve changed.
These days I post a photo on Instagram most days (usually of the chihuahuas). I’ve built up a nice little network there, mostly of dog people and fountain pen people. I love looking at all the pretty pictures… The other day someone asked me how I use Instagram, and I said it was completely for personal enjoyment. Nothing “professional” about it.
I haven’t been on Twitter as much. Twitter seems full of angry political commentary and links to leadership posts these days. This could be easily fixed by looking at who I’m following and making some changes, or even lists, if I want to moderate what I look at. It seems like too much bother, though.
There’s Snapchat, which I’m not embarrassed to say I haven’t managed to figure out yet. And Litsy, which is trying to be Instagram for Bookworms. (It’s fun but I haven’t got many friends on there yet, and friends is what makes it work.)
(I quit Facebook a few years ago, and I’m still not on Facebook, although recently I’ve been using M’s account to look at a very cool local fountain pen group that’s active there. It hasn’t tempted me to rejoin Facebook, though…)
So from blogging it seems I’ve switched my energies to all these closed networks. Also I kept wanting to punctuate these sentences with emojis… Is this how far we’ve come, the pinnacle of socmed?!
Every June I think back to the glorious days when blogging was THE social media thing everyone did, and I kinda wish we all still did. You can’t go home again. Or can you?
11 Comments
I think we can go back again – blogging is a useful discipline and a way to share. But I too struggle to keep up the momentum – it’s a great idea but sometimes harder to do in practice. I’ve also fallen off Twitter a bit of late but do really enjoy it when I’m on it 🙂 and I use emojis a lot (even when I write physical letters!) 😀 looking forward to your blogging journey
Thanks for stopping by, Abigail.
Do you write many physical letters?!
Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing if we focus on going back instead of making the future better – you can go home again but it might need a renovation. I’d like to see blog commenting e/perience redesigned so that we could comment via twitter, or disqus or whatever and have them all integrated better.
Agree, we can get stuck in nostalgia (I’ve seen it happen with some library folks!). Blog commenting hasn’t really had any innovation since it started, has it?
Someone really needs to do some innovation around commenting from mobile devices. I read in Feedly and find commenting difficult from there. Integration would be brilliant!
I tend to feel that any delineation between “personal” and “professional” is something constructed rather than something required. Not that I can talk on that one as all my social media outpourings are personal with the occasional professional reference 🙂 Hmmm…there’s an idea for another post…
I suppose when I referred to Instagram being personal, I meant I have been using it without any inkling of thought of how I can use it to learn “work” stuff, or connect with other library folks. It’s all about the things I enjoy in my non-work time, like dogs, and fountain pens… But I agree, the delineation between “personal” and “professional” is constructed – and everyone has their boundaries set differently!
I am so inspired to blog now! I haven’t blogged in many many years. I am going to start a whole new 0ne with no real idea of what it should be and see where it goes.
You could blog about fountain pens… dogs… art…
Thanks for stopping by!