On his Facebook status a friend of mine (actually he was my boyfriend for about 10 minutes in 8th grade - isn't Facebook great?), wrote:
All this communication might make my head explode.
Chris, I wholeheartedly concur!
After writing yesterday's post I felt almost wretched. That's a strong term but I do believe a fitting one. I wanted to know, to learn, to understand, EVERYTHING. I was on data overload - it was swarming and taking me down. It was as if ants were crawling over my naked body: jumpy, itchy, uncomfortable, and needing dive head-first into an extremely cold lake.
When I first began to blog I felt similarly and eventually just had to let all the social networking research cease. It was entirely too overwhelming. Instead I decided to write my daily posts and wait for people to find me. And when I found other blogs that interested me reading them regularly was (still is) a commitment I wasn't able to make.
My 105 Facebook friends demand very little of me - that's just a fun distraction. But when I started promoting my business on FB I once again felt the pull of the information highway - the pressure to take every exit so you don't miss a thing.
And then along comes that annoying little bird whom I had managed so long to evade. Twitter. Twitter-dumb and Twitter-dumber. That was the final straw for me.
As I mentioned yesterday, I am getting infuriated at the amount of time I am "supposed" to spend networking online in order to sell myself and my writing. Well, news flash! There ain't gonna be any writing if I keep this up. I have two days a week without my children around, two days only to do all the myriad things I have to do to be the person I have dreamed of being. I did not dream of being a red-eyed computer junkie!
One thing I did learn on my voyage around cyberspace yesterday at a post by Rachelle Gardner, is that I need to keep my blog consistent in order to keep people coming back (and little snippets of useful information like this is why I can't completely quit networking all together). And while the subtitle of this blog does say the word "random," I'm not sure I can use that as an excuse to write crappy posts about crappy subjects just because my brain is fried from all the cyber-research I have been flailing around in.
Another thing Rachelle said was to remember that your latest post is always what a new visitor is going to read first and judge you on. This really made me think... am I writing well enough? What if an editor happened to read this? (This reminds me of WWJD (What Would Jesus Do); or the common question in our British-heritage family: Would you do that if you were at the Queen's for dinner? Always be the best you can be.)
Writing is why I began this blog journey. Writing for the sake of writing. I have so few readers, (and I want to keep you coming back, along with your friends - and please let me know you're here, it really helps!), but primarily I do this for me. I love to write - I need to write. I do not need to tweet or be tweeted at. My priority must be to continue on my journey as a Writer while hopefully inspiring you along the way. If, once in a while I happen upon a tool or tidbit that helps me on that journey, then so be it.
But for now, that little bird needs to stop chirping in my ear so I can get back to work.
(What's the first thing I did after I hit "publish"? Tweeted this post... !)
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