It's All About Me

The most difficult part about social media, for me, is finding the motivation to keep going. I think that's because my motivation is directly tied to feedback, of which I get very little.

When I started this blog, way back in 2003, there were a lot of other bloggers out there. You could spend quite a bit of time reading great material from great writers. At the same time, your own words were hitting more eyeballs and comments were common. I'm not going to lie and say that I had amazing interaction back then either, but I certainly had a lot more than I do now. I get it... Social media has evolved away from the long format of a blog, and towards whatever you'd call the visual equivalent of soundbites (sight bites?). If you try to communicate with the mere written word today, you've got about 1 minute to do it before your audience moves on to something easier to consume.

As we moved into the Facebook / Twitter / Google+ era, I tried to adapt. I shared links to things I thought were interesting, but no one else seemed to think they were. I crafted short, witty, often off-the-wall comments, but my sense of humor didn't seem to translate well. I asked what I perceived to be thought-provoking questions, only to receive silence in return. If I'm honest, it was quite demoralizing. There I was, swimming in a sea of social media where people were getting 10 and 20 comments per post, lots of back and forth with their readers, while seeing nothing but "No Comments" on my own shares.

Note: This is NOT a "Poor me!" post... Allow me to continue.

I rolled with these punches and transitioned from "creator" to "consumer". I stopped trying to garner attention for myself, and focused more on how entertaining or informative those around me were. Google+ was especially good for this. As I've mentioned before (and countless others have stated elsewhere), it was a place where interests came first and relationships were a by-product (as opposed to Facebook, which does it the other way around). For this reason, I didn't need to have existing relationships with others in order to enjoy the topics they were sharing. All I had to do was scroll, click, read, and repeat. Occasionally, I'd throw in a comment or two, but I never felt like I needed to, nor did I obsess over whether or not anyone read those comments. Sure, maybe I was missing the "social" aspect of social media, but I was content to participate this way for the better part of 5 years.

Then came the end of Google+ and, with it, my decision to resuscitate this blog.

I'm now tasking myself with taking up the mantle of "creator" once again, knowing full-well that it will be a harder slog than ever before. There are no longer a lot of other bloggers out there, attention spans are shorter than they have ever been, and there are so many more places for people to find entertainment these days. The chances that my words will even be read by another person are slim. The chances I'll get any sort of engagement is all but laughable.

Still, I'm going to do it... but not for the sake of social media. I'm going to do it for me. I'm going to do it because I love to get my thoughts out in an intelligent and creative way. I'm going to do it because I love to look back, sometimes years later, on what I've written to remember who I was or what I was going through. I'm going to do it because I love it. Period.

This means that I won't be holding myself to any other standard than my own satisfaction. I'm not going to try to pump out posts on a regular basis... they'll come when they come. I'm not going to get discouraged by the words "No Comments"... if they happen, they happen. If not, that's fine, too. Again, I see the irony in eliminating "social" from my social media experience, but my inner happiness is more important to me than conforming to whatever "rules" we're expected to live by in this digital age. If anyone reads my words and gets anything out of them... anything... that's merely a bonus now.

It's "me" time.