Watermark

Blogging Angst

 

It's frightening how much I've forgotten in one year of only sporadically blogging. I have to relearn simple coding. And so much has changed. The TypePad interface has changed. Facebook has taken over the internet world. I've added the Facebook like button to my posts; this is great, at least I know folks are stopping by, even if they (you) don't comment.

Blogrolling has closed down, and with it, most of my blogrolls. Those blogrolls took years to develop, and I don't know that I will take that on again. At least not immediately. For the moment, I'll be concentrating on just writing and posting more frequently.

I'm considering stopping the Networked Blogs posting to Facebook. None of these services are well designed for poets; they all strip the line breaks, so what shows up is a thick block of text. I'm working on a way to post links and a few lines to Facebook, hoping that readers will click through if they're interested.

I haven't even been taking photos, so must become reacquainted with my cameras. All these skills that used to seem so easy, almost natural, have become clumsy and awkward with disuse.

A year of not writing makes that a challenge as well. I feel rusty, creaky, and generally off-balance. But that's getting better. Already. I think.

And, of course, there is the deeper angst -- the does it matter angst, the am I good enough to be bothering with this angst. This helped:

 

Guide to Career Education

Top Blogs for Writers

 

(Now, see -- damned if I can get that to center.)

My plan/hope is to resume blogging two or three times each week. I do not expect to go back to the nearly daily schedule I maintained early on.

To those who have kept me on their readers and links, and those who keep coming by to see if there's anything new to look at: Thank you!

 

 

Lost in the Social Media Landscape

No, sweet & silly Belle has nothing to do with the subject of this post -- except that I made that image for a Facebook friend, and haven't done Friday Cat Blogging here for ages.

Watermark used to be the center of my online life (which is much of my Real Life.) Now, there is Twitter and Facebook and Identi.ca. Also Friendfeed, which I have but rarely use. Also many others which I have but rarely use. Oh, and Open Salon, another neglected site.

Watermark posts show up in some of those places, and comments happen away from the original post. The conversation gets scattered and fractured. The center is spread thin. Too thin? Sometimes I think so.

But the spread also brings more people in. People who don't come here, notice a post on Facebook and respond there, and vice versa. More and more I use Watermark to post my poems, and other places to play and converse and post links. Lately my energy has allowed for one or two poems a week, a bit of play on Facebook, and that's about it.

I've been particularly frustrated about links that interest or amuse me. I've been posting them to Facebook, but not here, since I don't want to overwhelm Watermark readers with too-frequent or irrelevant posts. So -- I made a widget. It's there on the sidebar, for those who are interested, and those who aren't can ignore it.

I might even start throwing in some cat links there.

So one frustration is solved; I feel better about providing links to Watermark readers as well as Facebook friends. But I still don't have a center, one place where conversations are gathered together. Maybe this doesn't matter. Maybe it bothers only me?

How do you handle this? Is it a problem for you, or just how things work these days?