One thought about starting up a journal again that I’ve had is: why here? Why write these words on your own site rather than just use an established social media or other service which might draw more eyes?

Part of that I answered in a previous post, I’m not doing this for other people to read. I’m doing this for myself. I’m perfectly fine with these words living on a secluded island in the middle of nowhere rather than in the streaming river of social media newsfeeds that a handful of friends and relatives might see on Facebook or even fewer strangers on Twitter might click on.

I remember the first “news feed” that I’d check out on a daily basis, long before social sharing became a thing. It was a site called k10k. Again, this was when I had slowed my consumption of novels in place of spending hours in front of a Mac learning HTML and javascript and trying to catch up to my peers with their PhotoShop and Flash skills). The site’s tagline was “The Designers Lunchbox” and it was something I’d go to often to see what projects they were featuring while taking a break with my own work. I remember even contributing a couple submissions to one of their regular components — an online gallery of desktop patterns. You’d take a full screengrab of your desktop, icons and all of you wished, to show off to the world. Could be photography, a collage of imagery, or vector art patterns and shapes, whatever you wanted. I could get lost clicking through and seeing what people came up with.

Kaliber10000 (or K10k) was the brain-child of Toke, Michael & Per – it was an independent, non-commercial web zine which strived to inspire, to provoke, to allow both others & ourselves the joy of having full artistic freedom – to give people a break, and re-charge their batteries. 

cubancouncil.com

Another attention draw on k10k was their newsfeed. A group of select individuals would post links to projects of theirs or just cool shit they found while clicking around on the web. It was a one-way feed, not everyone or anyone could contribute, but it was the first non-news site that hooked me into coming back several times a day to check out what was fresh. The site was a community in itself and I really enjoyed being a small part of it, even if it was mostly just as part of the audience.

I don’t recall why they stopped updating the site, or if I just grew away from it and stopped paying attention. Eventually the beasts Facebook and Twitter replaced it as my go-to sharing vehicles with their own communities and shortfalls (I was never a reddit user or bulletin board user, so forgive me for not giving them attention here).

Social media platforms have their well documented pluses and minuses, I’ve never been overly concerned about privacy or ownership for the most part. If something is that dear to you and you want to protect it, don’t share it on someone else’s platform. Ownership, however, is a little more concerning and that’s one reason I’m starting to write here and not there. My words, my island.

And it’s worth mentioning that this is a good way to attempt at cutting down on the social media reliance my attention affords. I spend too much time there. Time to carve out some me time here and cut down on the noise out there.

If my wife Jen didn’t do an amazing job building two small local businesses (Molly’s Bees Honey and The Hive Kitchen) mostly through audiences and customers she’s made through Facebook, I might give up on that altogether. But it’s a megaphone for word of mouth when it comes to growing a local business, so that angle is worth putting up with the rest of the cacophony.

So here I am spending about a half hour during my lunch break writing words instead of getting my blood pressure up on Twitter or watching dog videos on Facebook. I’m not saying those are entirely worthless, anything can have benefits in moderation, but I’ve put in my quota for writing down thoughts for a day (even though typing this with my thumbs on a phone is for the birds).

Who knows, maybe I’ll find a web ring to join and I can be part of an island chain or archipelago of people writing to hear themselves talk.

We’ll see how it goes.