The Compulsion To Blog Again Is Upon Me

It has been some time since I last blogged. A lot of that had to do with my engrossment of social media. I would check FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc on a daily basis. Without realizing I would spend a few hours idling by looking at people’s “best versions” of their lives and compare it to bland mundane version of myself.

Also, I would realize that it was time wasted, that I could have done something more productive, or, at the very least, more entertaining. That would fuel my self-loathing and despondency and I would escape further into my shell and just consume more media and blog nothing.

Social Networks Are Losing Their Hold On Me

It’s been some time since my last post. One significant change since then is my lack of Social Network interaction. I removed Facebook and Twitter from my devices about two months. I deleted my Instagram account a while ago. Oh yeah, I removed Snapchat from my phone recently as well. I just don’t see the point in any of them. At least not for me.

If anything, they were a big time suck. There were times when I felt I “needed” to go on them to “feel connected” with the world and those around me. Other times, I would go down my newsfeeds and then realized that I wasted hours away and have to rush other things the rest of my day. There was never a moderate way to use social networks. More importantly, I didn’t feel more connected to anyone using them. If anything, I felt more isolated from everyone and more of a stalker than a participant of some post on any of these social networks.

Ending My Run On WordPress

It’s been some time since I’ve taken this blog seriously. I know part of it has to do with my reluctance to write anymore and my increase in media consumption, as was pointed out in my most recent post from a few months back. I think the other reason might be the changes that have undergone with WordPress as well.

Maybe it’s just me but lately I’ve felt lost navigating around my WordPress account in recent months/years. I felt it was much easier to get around and to get right to writing. I feel like it’s more distracting and more about discovering what else is going on around the WordPressverse and less with pushing me to publish my stuff.

I can understand somewhat why WP is taking this direction. They’ve probably lost some current and future customers to social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and sure a small (really small) amount to Google+. I’m sure Tumblr is going through some bumps in the road (another WP rival) .

But what I loved about WP in the past was it’s no compromise approach to blogging and website publishing. Yeah Tumblr was a new upstart not too long ago and they were already taking the  social network approach just as Facebook was ending MySpace’s reign and Twitter was just developing and reducing their fail whale outages. It seems now that WP has finally given and tried to meld social networking and website publishing together.

Granted maybe a lot of people like this new interface and I’m and old fuddy duddy reminiscing about days of yore. I just don’t quite enjoy myself on WordPress as I have in the past. I just started podcasting again. In the past I would’ve immediately made a new site for my show on WordPress. This time however I’m going to give Blogger a chance (something I never would have said when I was a huge WordPress fan).

Blogger doesn’t seem to have changed much since Google bought them way back when. And yes their websites don’t look as spiffy as WordPress sites. But they kept the user interface the same and I feel I can navigate it much better than the new WP version. I go right to my blog and publish my podcast. I may even import this blog over there as well if I still feel like blogging as well. I use a lot of Google services as it is. What’s one more.

I Suck At Social Networks

I recently reactivated my account on Twitter (yet again). I keep hearing how people are better informed because of this network so I decided to try to use it as a newsfeed, like a more real-time version of a rss reader. Of course this only works if I follow just news accounts and other accounts that catch my fancy and not follow people who I would normally follow on say FaceBook. I’m sure there is a more social way to use Twitter but I’ve not found a way to do it (it’s one of the reasons I’ve killed my account so many times). Which brings me to a realization: I suck at social networks.

Then again I’m not really good at socializing to begin with. When I’m not at work socializing with customers or work associates, I’m home doing non-socializing forms of recreation (reading, listening or watching some form of media). At least that has been my main form of recreation for the last year. The only exception to this are the few social casual games I play on my phone thanks to Zynga. I have been going out to comedy shows a lot less and staying home a lot more. I guess I’ve become a bit of a social recluse and I guess I’m ok with that.

It seems I’m more comfortable spending my time escaping into mediums of fiction rather than meeting new people or making more social connections. I only have enough time to just do random status updates and lurk through my various news feeds/timelines/streams to get an idea of what’s going on and then I log out and go on about my day (or at least that’s the only time I’m willing to divulge). Then again, another reason I don’t seem to updated my accounts much is that I don’t do much besides work and then go home. There is only so many times you can post that mundanity.

Oh well, how about you? How do you use your social networks? Do you get more out of Twitter than just a news feed function? Let me know.

Trimming Down My Digital Footprint

As you can tell from my last blog entry, it has been quite a while since I last wrote. Just shy of 2 months by 3-4 days to be exact. It hasn’t really been for a lack of ideas but time. Real life has butted into all my activities and kept me off the inter-webs. My usual routines had to be rearranged or removed altogether.

One of the bad things about working in retail, because I’m always attentive to my surroundings to deal with customers, I have very little time for my my old consumption habits. In fact, instead of having my ears plugged in for 8+ hours like I used to in the past, I just have time to listen on my lunch breaks and during my commutes (this roughly translated to 2+hours/day). This drastic change made me take a long look at what I used to spend time on and wean off what I was willing to sacrifice.

At first I started with daily podcasts. I just don’t have the time to keep up with those. This in turn led me to waiving all talk-podcasts and just stick to story-related ones (i.e. Decoder Ring Theatre, This American Life, etc). My reasoning is that with stories I have a beginning and an end which gives me closure and I can move on to the next thing. With talk podcasts I don’t get that satisfaction. Also, I listen to Audible (I pay for this, I damn well better use it) so story-related podcasts are a good compliment to this service.

This shortened-consumption time has also led me back to music listening. A four minute song takes up less time than a 30 minute podcast; moreover, I don’t listen as closely to music as I listen to podcasts, so if I miss a few lyrics there is little to no guilt about it and I won’t have the inclination to rewind and re-listen. I’ll just continue to go on with my day. Not to mention music gets me moving and I tend to get more done with music than podcasts (again that listening factor is key. Multitasking isn’t something I’m all that good at).

Next on the chopping block was social networks. I was initially enthusiastic about Google+ but after a few weeks my account just remained stagnant. I didn’t really communicate with anyone there so it was just a waste of digital space. Consequently I trashed that account. I haven’t used Foursquare in months. I haven’t been going anywhere besides home and work and checking-in to those places lost it’s novelty quite a while ago so that account was expunged. With little consumption time I also had very little time to log-in to social apps and I realized that I almost rarely used Twitter except to tweet or share a link. I almost never read my timeline anymore. At work I’m always busy and when I’m home I rather be reading my Kindle or watching Netflix so after a little more deliberation Twitter was also removed from my life. This left Facebook. I use Facebook very seldomly. In fact there was a time that I thought Twitter was more useful than Facebook. My how things have changed. As seldom as I use Facebook, one of the main reasons I keep it is because my wife still uses it and the last time I deleted my account (2 times now, I believe) she reprimanded me for making her a Facebook widow. It still has some uses for me. It helps me keep track of birthdays and there are still some events I like to stay informed on.

Lastly, I took a long look at my hobbies. I knew there was no way I was going to stop watching TV and I am really making a concerted effort to read more which left me to ponder the fate of my blog and podcasts. I started the blog strong early this year and really did my best to keep up with the post-a-week pledge. Obviously those efforts were lacking these past two months which is why I rightfully removed my badge from the site, as I can no longer claim to be a weekly blogger. I will try again next year. As for the podcasts, it takes more time to record, edit and post a 30-60 minute episode than it takes to type up a blog entry. It also takes a lot of passion and commitment to keep one going. I took a strong look at myself and realized that my interests in podcasting have been fickle at best. So with that small epiphany, I took down both, “The Julio From NY Show” and “The Mundane Chatter Podcast“.

There you have it. I whittled down my digital footprint down to Facebook and this here blog. The hope of this change is that my creative energies will be more focused and therefore my output will once again be more frequent than every few months.