Simplifying my Prolificism
Ever since I found the world of blogging through my first platform - LiveJournal - I began a nerdy relationship with online Me. There are just so many ways to share oneself. After Livejournal, I joined MySpace and then Blogger, then Wordpress, then Webs.com then self-hosted sites... not because I thought I was SO important I required this many online haunts, but because there were just so many different platforms to play with.
A new web service is -to me - a blank canvass. Much of my enjoyment comes from the creation and not the maintaining. This is why I enjoy putting together sites for people who are looking for something simple and free (or almost free if they are self-hosting).
I moved to exclusively self-hosted wordpress.org a few years ago because I began to worry about all my online content belonging to a company instead of to me. I also wanted to run a forum (Spiral Inward) because there were things I was hoping to learn but was not able to find the sort of venue that was at the same time welcoming and informative for the topic of Gnosticism. That site is the only site I have faithfully maintained and updated over the years.
I do like the idea of having my images and family photos in a place owned only by me, that my family can upload to, download from and yet is owned fully by me/us and not a company with a bunch of Terms and Conditions that make me agree, inadvertently, that in the end I give them permission to do whatever they need to do with it and that they can even shut down, have a major fail and that's just too bad.
I find my self hosted blog endeavours to be a bit pointless though because they don't have the same community as blogger, or even Xanga for that matter.
I left Facebook because the method of communication is lazy and empty. As a result I found myself migrating back to some of my old blogging haunts because in blogging (not microblogging as much) we actually read the life stories of others. We actually click on their lil icon, read their story and comment. We don't rely on just popular memes and status updates. It's not about quick memes and reshares.
Though I still find that places like Livejournal and Xanga are more fault friendly than some of the big guys. On those two platforms, people still just share simple tidbits of their non-perfect lives, not worrying so much about how savvy, witty and brainy they sound.
Blogger , and moreso Wordpress bloggers seem to be more about attracting a specific kind of audience than simply sharing life's experiences. I follow more bloggers that are of the latter. Though there are some bloggers who I follow because I find their blogs to be educational and highly informative, the ones I enjoy the most are those that are just about the average person living his/her life. The person who stumbles, questions, examines.. . ultimately I find their blogs to be the most appreciated in my own stumbling, rather ordinary life.
Likewise I used to have one blog for spiritual me, one blog for family me (liking that I created my own private family contributed gallery) and one blog for 'maybe make some revenue' me. However I only end up doing a half-assed job at any of these, and being scattered about all over it ends up feeling rather impersonal.
So I think, seeing as how this blog has been here forever, I will just allow all those different blogs to flow right into one. Here. Though maybe not the revenue me, as I hate coming across ads on people's sites. Maybe I'll just save that for my message boards... who knows.
Livejournal is still active, as is Xanga - I just can't help it. I like popping into the community from time to time. There are people at Livejournal I know from 12 years ago. Still blogging.
But I think I will just return to blogger as a platform. I will miss the bells and whistles of wordpress' very truly amazing plugins and private owned galleries... but really all of it is just online anyhow. A major catastrophe and it would all be gone anyhow. Not good to put so much effort and time into maintaining so much online bullshit when real life is all around me.
K. Ramble over.
A new web service is -to me - a blank canvass. Much of my enjoyment comes from the creation and not the maintaining. This is why I enjoy putting together sites for people who are looking for something simple and free (or almost free if they are self-hosting).
I moved to exclusively self-hosted wordpress.org a few years ago because I began to worry about all my online content belonging to a company instead of to me. I also wanted to run a forum (Spiral Inward) because there were things I was hoping to learn but was not able to find the sort of venue that was at the same time welcoming and informative for the topic of Gnosticism. That site is the only site I have faithfully maintained and updated over the years.
I do like the idea of having my images and family photos in a place owned only by me, that my family can upload to, download from and yet is owned fully by me/us and not a company with a bunch of Terms and Conditions that make me agree, inadvertently, that in the end I give them permission to do whatever they need to do with it and that they can even shut down, have a major fail and that's just too bad.
I find my self hosted blog endeavours to be a bit pointless though because they don't have the same community as blogger, or even Xanga for that matter.
I left Facebook because the method of communication is lazy and empty. As a result I found myself migrating back to some of my old blogging haunts because in blogging (not microblogging as much) we actually read the life stories of others. We actually click on their lil icon, read their story and comment. We don't rely on just popular memes and status updates. It's not about quick memes and reshares.
Though I still find that places like Livejournal and Xanga are more fault friendly than some of the big guys. On those two platforms, people still just share simple tidbits of their non-perfect lives, not worrying so much about how savvy, witty and brainy they sound.
Blogger , and moreso Wordpress bloggers seem to be more about attracting a specific kind of audience than simply sharing life's experiences. I follow more bloggers that are of the latter. Though there are some bloggers who I follow because I find their blogs to be educational and highly informative, the ones I enjoy the most are those that are just about the average person living his/her life. The person who stumbles, questions, examines.. . ultimately I find their blogs to be the most appreciated in my own stumbling, rather ordinary life.
Likewise I used to have one blog for spiritual me, one blog for family me (liking that I created my own private family contributed gallery) and one blog for 'maybe make some revenue' me. However I only end up doing a half-assed job at any of these, and being scattered about all over it ends up feeling rather impersonal.
So I think, seeing as how this blog has been here forever, I will just allow all those different blogs to flow right into one. Here. Though maybe not the revenue me, as I hate coming across ads on people's sites. Maybe I'll just save that for my message boards... who knows.
Livejournal is still active, as is Xanga - I just can't help it. I like popping into the community from time to time. There are people at Livejournal I know from 12 years ago. Still blogging.
But I think I will just return to blogger as a platform. I will miss the bells and whistles of wordpress' very truly amazing plugins and private owned galleries... but really all of it is just online anyhow. A major catastrophe and it would all be gone anyhow. Not good to put so much effort and time into maintaining so much online bullshit when real life is all around me.
K. Ramble over.
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