Last night I went wandering through my blog posts over the last year and a half, reading comments and taking note of how frequently I would update and how my thoughts were developed. Among the post, I noticed how many were just odd occurrences and student mishaps. "Why haven't I written post like these in so long?" The answer: Twitter.
I hopped on the tweeting wagon last summer during a tech class, having no idea that I would actually use the thing, let only use it frequently. And though my tweets started as bad Facebook-esque posts (i.e. I'm eating candy again!), they have turned into a home for student antics and stupidity. Now, instead of producing a web log entry to show how I am responding or to show my reflections on the sad state of the world, I cram them into 140 characters and let my followers respond and reflect.
There is a benefit to all of this. More people read my tweets than read my blog (because my tweets double as my Facebook updates), and therefore more folk get to laugh at what goes on in my school life. Also, time is saved (when I began blogging my posts took me forever to craft, but that's another writing issue I've got to deal with).
I do want to blog more often and more thoughtfully. The depth issue may be resolved with the near arrival of Young Master Prindle (I can't begin to think what my brain will do when he arrives, and he may give me more to write about also). I suppose for now though, I will have to settle for a few posts a month unless otherwise inspired.
So feel free to bring it on, Muse.
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I went through the same thing. I used to post smaller thoughts to my blog and it became a repository for a little bit of everything me. Then I joined Twitter so that I could understand it well enough to make work-related recommendations on how best to use it. I of course got completely hooked on it and as social media goes, it's my absolute favorite. It's so perfect for quick thoughts and the connections I've made there are awesome. But no sooner did Twitter become the outlet for all my random thoughts and findings did my blog writing come to a near standstill.
What that did for me though, was good, in that it let me save my blog for longer, more thoughtful writing. I now post much less frequently there, but I feel like I post much, much better content precisely because I'm taking more time to not only write what I'm writing there, but consider my subject matter. In making that shift, as well as in updating my theme to something with deeper content needs (that is, needing to have a good photo to go with each post so that the site looks good), I ended up with sort of an oddly reversed effect. I now need for something I write to be "worthy" of going on my blog, if for no other reason than it's a bit more trouble.
What I did find eventually, however, is that because my blog is all fancy now, I needed a place to post stuff that was too long for Twitter, but too short and passing for my "official" blog. That's where Tumblr came in. www.nathanielsalzman.tumblr.com. Love it. Now I can post links and videos and random little paragraph thoughts. It's extra handy in that it double-auto-posts to both Twitter and Facebook, which is super handy. But being the design geek that I am, it's of course "branded" to match all my other "web property." Seems like back in the day we collected email address. Now I'm collecting websites. Two full blogs, one mini blog, one micro blog. Oy. But hey, at least we're contributing to the internet instead of just passively wondering around on it.
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