Territorial Bloggings

Gracious, it’s been almost three weeks since I posted anything here. I’ve been feeling oddly disquieted of late, but now I feel downright guilty about it.

Back just before the start of the year, I started getting more involved in Facebook, and that siphoned no small amount of my time & attention away from writing things in longer form here.

Now, within the past month or so, I’ve started to get more into Twitter (@glenpiper). This has, much to my surprise I must admit, siphoned off even more time & attention away from blogging. Frankly, Twitter has even siphoned time & attention away from FB.

I didn’t think that Twitter would turn out to be as interesting to me as it has. Nor did I think it would actually end up being useful, as evidenced by my late & somewhat reluctant entry into the arena. That said, I’m actually very surprised at how useful Twitter has turned out to be for me. I’ve had to wrestle with how to use it productively (something that I’m still doing, btw), but as a tool for social, personal, and professional interaction, as well as for entertainment and information, Twitter has proven to be far more useful than I ever thought possible.

What I’m struggling with the most now, though, is this: How do I strike the proper balance between the (for me) purely social space that is FB, the social/informational/whatever microblogging space that is Twitter, and the still useful and necessary longer form thinking space that is traditional blogging?

The biggest downcheck I’ve found in FB & Twitter (again, for me) is this: it is so approachable in its immediacy that it’s all too tempting & easy to fall into shallow patterns of thinking & reacting, while giving short shrift to more contemplative & thoroughly considered, longer form, thinking & writing.

The grind of daily life is such that the reactive forms of interaction are more gratifying, at least instantly, and thus more (for lack of a better word) doable. The downside, though, is that they bring with them the accumulation of a not-insignificant latent angst, as one is exposed to the unrelentingly high-paced, yet shallow-in-presentation, Twitter stream.

Aside from the micro- vs. regular blogging question, another issue that’s crossed my mind is that of audience. For the most part, I think there’s a majority of my audience that follows me in two or all three of the spaces. If I had to guess, however, I’d wager that more folks will see what I blurt out via Twitter. Then again, I also know that there are some folks who only see what I do if it shows up on FB. The good thing is that I’ve figured out how to get what I do here, in the long-form “regular” blog” to show up in the other two spaces, either as a “note” (FB), or as an announcement w/a link (Twitter). I could very well be over-, and thus out-, thinking myself on this particular question/issue…

Ultimately, I guess, it’s about finding the right balance for me. It doesn’t help, in some ways, to see that there are some folks out there who are doing a far better job of pumping out content in all three spaces, particularly in the long-form space (’cause *that’s* where reps are made, don’cha know, along with Issues, Etc. Blog of the Week selections, right Frank? Besides, I fancy myself as erudite and able to churn out well-turned phrases as any in the Lutheran blogosphere — A man can have his conceits, can’t he? As the great bard Axl Rose opined, “I’ve worked to hard for my illusions just to throw them all away.” But I digress…). I guess I’ll just keep grinding away as best I can – not everyone can be as prolific as McCain…

-ghp

Just dropped in two new plugins, along with the WordPress 2.8.1 update: one to push new post notifications out into the Twitter-stream, and one to facilitate/enable folks to login using their Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, OpenID, Google, or Yahoo accounts when they want to post comments.

It’s not so much that I’m against anonymous comments (although I do prefer names to be associated with opinions), it’s more that I think it’s a pretty cool plugin because it allows accounts/userids/passwords that folks already have to be leveraged in another place/way. We’ll see how it works out…

-ghp

I know that The Wittenberg Trail is reasonably en vogue as the social networking site of choice in the online Lutheran world. I must confess, however, that it’s always been a bit too much for me. At first, it was largely because I just didn’t like the idea/concept of the whole social networking thing – it was a bit too chummy for my taste & comfort. And I didn’t need the discussion areas & pseudo-blogging spaces that these types of sites give, because I get discussions & blogs at, wait for it… discussion forums and blogs.

Every so often, I would revisit WT to see if it would grab me, or if I would somehow get it now that some time had passed. I never did. If anything, the growth in WT put me off to it even more. I knew that good stuff was going on there, because I knew lots of good folks who were active there (I interacted with them at other sites…).

In the past few weeks, though, one thing has changed – I’m not as dead set against the social networking model anymore. I’ve gotten more involved in Facebook. At first, as is my wont, I was going to segment it off to have FB be just for my “non-lutheran stuff” – i.e., college friends. Then I started getting in contact with some high school friends (something I never thought would happen, but I’m glad it did…). Then I started seeing that many/most of the folks that I have contact with in the Lutheran blogosphere also have a FB presence. So, not only did that knock down my compartmentalization, it also way knocked down any need/desire I might have for getting back on WT.

It comes down to this, I guess — I now see the utility of the social networking site concept. FB delivers that utility to me in a far greater and richer way than does WT, despite WT’s narrower niche strengths. I don’t need those particular niches met in a social networking site because I get them elsewhere (discussion forums & the blogosphere). Since FB can give me the superset of the WT folks I know and the non-WT folks I want to link up with, it’s the better choice.

Thus, I’m going to kill off my WT account because, 1) I don’t want to leave a loose end hanging out there, and 2) I don’t have the time or the inclination to keep up with WT, for all the reasons listed above.

-ghp

So I’ve started to get a bit more involved in the whole social networking thing. I’m slightly ambivalent about it. Shocking, I know…

I’m back on Twitter (Hi, Jane!), mainly out of a single pragmatic reason — I think it’ll make posting quick, micro-blog entries from my Blackberry & Netvibes startpage much easier. I have installed a Twitter plugin for WordPress, that facilitates the quick-n-easy type of posting that I envision will make posting more of a regular thing. Sometimes, I get hung up on overthinking (again, shocking, I know…) what I want to post, and end up posting nothing. A little stream-of-consciousness might not be a bad thing. And Twitter’s 140 character limit seems like it might just fit the bill for getting me focused & on topic for bite-sized pieces of information. We’ll see…

Where I’m really a bit more ambivalent, though, is with Facebook. Online social networking in general, really, is an interesting topic for me, given that “real”/”meatspace” networking isn’t always my cup of tea, me being a largely antisocial introvert and all. That all said, I’ve been doing a little more on Facebook for some reason. I can’t really say why, ’cause I don’t know. I’ve “friended” a few folks who were really close friends in college, and it’s been interesting to see what they’ve made available. Voyeuristic curiosity is always fun to indulge once in a while. ;^)

But perhaps more interesting has been the “friending” of folks from high school. Since graduating from high school, I’ve had very little contact with anyone. I went to college with one girl, but haven’t seen her since we graduated from college. A handful of times over the past 23 years, I’ve run into someone, but nothing too terribly significant (minus one obvious exception during the first two years of college, that shall go without further mention, thankyouverymuch…). Another exception is going on now, where the older sister (she was two years ahead of us) of someone I went to school with for most of grade school & all of high school goes to the same church that we do. In fact, our daughters are in the same class in school.

In all, though, it’s probably been better that I’ve not had much of any contact with folks, because I’m generally better off when I stay focused on the present/future. If/when I focus on the past too much, I tend to get too maudlin, and obsess about what I did wrong and/or what I could have done differently. The Facebook thing also has me potentially wondering about what people thought about me back then, and what they might think about me now. Granted, I know that’s not entirely rational — I mean, I know I’m not that important or significant, and I never was. But you still worry about things, even when you have a really good life. Adolescence is that significant a time in one’s formation. And for the most part, I really did like high school as I was going through it. Some relationship stuff that happened in the years right after it have intensified my insecurities (and, Lord knows, don’t we all have those about that time anyway…).

So what’s my point? I don’t know. I guess that I’m trying something outside my comfort zone, just to see how it works out. Hopefully I’m mature enough to keep it from blowing up in my face.

-ghp