I read an update on Facebook from a long time friend this morning that she was “turning inward”, and it got me thinking - about blogging, online presence, my current situation, and all sorts of other things.
Why did I have a domain? Why was I hosting my blog myself? Why wasn’t I using the free tools at hand? These are questions I have asked before, and questions I will probably ask again. The reason this time was most probably a knee jerk reaction to the loss of a blogger I knew well. She died in a car crash, and her voice was suddenly silenced. It was also perhaps a rebellious streak in me, reacting against the corporate ethos that “thou shalt not speak thy mind”.
Perhaps I’m becoming old and cynical. My writing will never become a career, and it will never make me famous. The most it might ever achieve is as a resource for others to look back on with a knowing smile from time to time - although that would depend on search technology digging up my thoughts and opinions in years to come. I can’t imagine the words I share here will remain relevant in years to come; they are more likely to be looked back on with curiosity by close friends or family.
In the midst of all of this, those who read here will know I have begun writing a lifestream (jonbeckett.com). It’s new, it’s fun, and it fills a niche between the inane spoutings of Twitter, and the interminal navel gazing here. It also prepares for the inevitable fall of Twitter - something of a hot topic given the application developers forming a rebellion to create a federated twitter-like service (I thought this had already happened through identica, but what do I know…).
If one thing is certain, it’s that I will continue to write, and to share.
p.s. sorry about the theme - WordPress reliably inform me that nice new themes are coming - chief among them is Twenty Ten, which will arrive with WordPress 3.