Ah...blog. It's been awhile. But I promise it's not my fault.
I used to write. Pretty darned frequently. I wrote about every silly little thing I did, said, observed, thought...whatever. And I'm never going to delude myself into thinking that anything I wrote was ever of any substance - by my own admission (and the title of this blog, even), what I wrote was fluffy little nonsense at best. But it was mine and I liked it, and I liked doing it. If I wasn't actually writing in my blog or finding stupid things to post to my blog, I was thinking about writing in it. I would check all the time to see how many people had viewed my posts and read all the comments if I got any in the hopes of sparking conversations about the dorky things I loved and loved to write about. I was a blog whore.
I'm not exactly sure when that changed. Maybe it was the new job/house/husband/kid and all the craziness that goes with all of those things. Maybe it was when I hit 40 and realized that I've done very few things that people tend to associate with being an "adult." Maybe it was when I received a comment from one of my regular readers that my writing is "much more entertaining when [I'm] unhappy."
I may not know exactly when this happened, but I can pinpoint at least one why: Facebook.
Facebook has become my go-to device for sharing all of my stupid fluffyness, and it keeps me from making the effort to blog proper-like. It's fast, easy, and available via pretty much any outlet -- it's like the fast food drive-thru that keeps people from bothering to actually cook. And people blame McDonald's for getting them fat, so I can blame Facebook for my lack of blogging motivation, right? So here goes:
Top 5 Ways Facebook Has Made Me a Lazy Blogger:
5. It's too easy - Seriously. I can post 50 cat photos before I even get out of bed. And I have.
4. Almost everyone is on FB already - Most of the people I know in actual, real-live life are already on Facebook, so they already know what a dork I am. And I don't write enough substance to actually go out and promote my blog to strangers. Who the heck would read this?
3. Everything is in one place - I used to follow at least a dozen blogs, belong to about 5 message boards to which I posted and read faithfully, and I had countless newsletter subscriptions to sites I read daily. And I loved reading and passing along interesting (to me) and funny (again...to me) information via my blog and commenting in the hopes of getting feedback and starting conversations. My Tuesday Top 5 came from a regular feature on a message board I frequented. But NOW, pretty much anything I would bother to find online has already been posted and shows up in my FB newsfeed half a dozen times before I get out of bed. So, I click "Share," and post. Done.
2. Too easy to lose focus - There are so many people and SO much information flying around on Facebook. And most of it is as fluffy and nosensical as anything on my blog -- even more so -- and I get distracted quite easily. "Oh, hey...let's see what my sister has to say abo.....OMG, KITTEN! CUUUUTE!"
1. Other people are just as lazy - Admit it: The posts that are right there and accessible without having to open another window or go to another site, or even having to scroll down are the ones you're most likely to read. I know I do it. So, I tend to figure no one really wants to bother, anyway, evidenced by the fact that I have 291 Facebook friends and 5 blog followers. :/
So, yeah. I get it. But I need to encourage myself to take the extra time and make the extra effort, so I'm making yet another promise to myself to try to stay focused and get the writing done - just as soon as I update my status...
I used to write. Pretty darned frequently. I wrote about every silly little thing I did, said, observed, thought...whatever. And I'm never going to delude myself into thinking that anything I wrote was ever of any substance - by my own admission (and the title of this blog, even), what I wrote was fluffy little nonsense at best. But it was mine and I liked it, and I liked doing it. If I wasn't actually writing in my blog or finding stupid things to post to my blog, I was thinking about writing in it. I would check all the time to see how many people had viewed my posts and read all the comments if I got any in the hopes of sparking conversations about the dorky things I loved and loved to write about. I was a blog whore.
I'm not exactly sure when that changed. Maybe it was the new job/house/husband/kid and all the craziness that goes with all of those things. Maybe it was when I hit 40 and realized that I've done very few things that people tend to associate with being an "adult." Maybe it was when I received a comment from one of my regular readers that my writing is "much more entertaining when [I'm] unhappy."
I may not know exactly when this happened, but I can pinpoint at least one why: Facebook.
Facebook has become my go-to device for sharing all of my stupid fluffyness, and it keeps me from making the effort to blog proper-like. It's fast, easy, and available via pretty much any outlet -- it's like the fast food drive-thru that keeps people from bothering to actually cook. And people blame McDonald's for getting them fat, so I can blame Facebook for my lack of blogging motivation, right? So here goes:
Top 5 Ways Facebook Has Made Me a Lazy Blogger:
5. It's too easy - Seriously. I can post 50 cat photos before I even get out of bed. And I have.
4. Almost everyone is on FB already - Most of the people I know in actual, real-live life are already on Facebook, so they already know what a dork I am. And I don't write enough substance to actually go out and promote my blog to strangers. Who the heck would read this?
3. Everything is in one place - I used to follow at least a dozen blogs, belong to about 5 message boards to which I posted and read faithfully, and I had countless newsletter subscriptions to sites I read daily. And I loved reading and passing along interesting (to me) and funny (again...to me) information via my blog and commenting in the hopes of getting feedback and starting conversations. My Tuesday Top 5 came from a regular feature on a message board I frequented. But NOW, pretty much anything I would bother to find online has already been posted and shows up in my FB newsfeed half a dozen times before I get out of bed. So, I click "Share," and post. Done.
2. Too easy to lose focus - There are so many people and SO much information flying around on Facebook. And most of it is as fluffy and nosensical as anything on my blog -- even more so -- and I get distracted quite easily. "Oh, hey...let's see what my sister has to say abo.....OMG, KITTEN! CUUUUTE!"
1. Other people are just as lazy - Admit it: The posts that are right there and accessible without having to open another window or go to another site, or even having to scroll down are the ones you're most likely to read. I know I do it. So, I tend to figure no one really wants to bother, anyway, evidenced by the fact that I have 291 Facebook friends and 5 blog followers. :/
So, yeah. I get it. But I need to encourage myself to take the extra time and make the extra effort, so I'm making yet another promise to myself to try to stay focused and get the writing done - just as soon as I update my status...
