Friday, November 1, 2019

Reboot

I'm going to start blogging again because it's good for me.

I know what you, the imaginary reader, will say to this: 

"Why? I stopped reading your blog a long time ago, if I ever read it in the first place. I'll just continue to ignore you."

Let me just quickly go through my personal history with, what, I guess "social media" is the right phrase.

  • E-mail (short for "electronic mail") - In the early 1990s, it was a delight to me to get e-mail from interesting friends, some of whom didn't even work in the same company. One drawback is that I stopped writing (and receiving) physical letters. 
  • E-mail List - In the late 1990s, I belonged to an e-mail list with friends. Several of us composed long messages that were bold, clever, and interesting. This was fun.
  • MSN Spaces Blog - In the early 2000s, Elden and I both created blogs on MSN Spaces that were somewhat popular. He had the more popular cycling blog, but I had a large number of people--mostly strangers--reading my Top 5 blog. There was something called a "blogosphere." Comments and fatigue ended up being the downfall of that blog.
  • Blogspot Blog - Because I like to write, I started a new blog--this one--and turned on commenting. I didn't get many comments, which made me feel bad, so I turned off commenting, which made be feel better in a way but made for one-way, closed-off conversation.
  • Facebook/Instagram - Facebook and Instagram shut down my blogging for some reason. However, posting on Facebook has become problematic for me. It silenced me.
  • Return to Blogging - I need to write more, even if it's for an imaginary audience. And I think I'll even turn on commenting, unless there's a spam problem.
So, hey ho, here we go.