to blog or not to blog — is that the question
Hello, blog. Long time no write.
As the two of you who still read this blog already know, I went on a social media hiatus last summer. I call it that, but what I’ve really done is absent myself from the platforms of Facebook and Twitter. The reasons for my decision are myriad, but the most important ones are:
- Both platforms bring out the worst in people I know (Facebook) and in people I don’t know (Twitter).
- The more time I spent on those platforms, the stronger the Babadook became in my life.
- These two platforms have edges without railings, and there’s a sheer drop-off that will plunge you into an endless abyss if you step over the edge. I was too close to the edge.
So I flew instead: away from both platforms. And I’m a happier person for it. I’m also a more patient person, a more productive person, a more focused person, a more giving and forgiving person. No amount of online “social” interaction is worth losing that. I’ve checked back in lurkingly with both platforms twice since last summer. Both times, the people on them showed me that little has changed. (And where it has changed, it’s worse.) So I know I made the right choice.
In the meantime, I thought I’d be blogging more, but that hasn’t been the case. I’ve felt no draw to use this platform, either. My lack of online presence is horribly detrimental to my book sales…but honestly, I can’t bring myself to care. The pocket change I get from book sales isn’t enough to make me want to try herding the cats of online presence, branding, blah blah marketing emergency blah.
Instead of blogging, I’ve been noveling. In less than one year, I finished the first and second drafts of The Flight of Elfled unBlessed, my latest novel in the Light-Walkers universe. I’ll publish it this year and probably spit out an announcement into the toxic cesspools of online social media, then forget those cesspools again. We’ll see. It’s a new year, I have lots of plans, I have no idea if they’re going to come to fruition, but I’m setting goals and loosing my arrows at targets to do my part in getting those organisms to produce. This is the year of mixing metaphors, and it is glorious.
I’ll say that I’d like to get back to blogging regularly, but I don’t know if that’s a realistic hope for myself or if it’s even a thing I need to be doing. If you see me here (you two Faithful Readers who remain), then you’ll know the answer to that. And so will I.
Toodles and kisses!