Not on Twitter much. Not on Facebook much. Not much feeling like blogging. I took the kiddo for some frozen yogurt. I made some bagels.
The whole twitter/facebook/blogging thing is fun most of the time. And over the past 6+ years I’ve made some great friends through this blog. But lately I’ve been feeling kind of…overexposed. Tired of tweeting about having yet another tempeh reuben lunch. Frankly, I’m also tired of reading what you’re all having for lunch.
Obviously I’m not giving up blogging or tweeting or Facebook. I mean…here I am, right? And probably in the next couple days or so it will seem fun again. But today I’m sitting here with a few minutes of down time, and I could be reading a book, but instead I get this nagging feeling like it’s time to check in with the blog. And that’s coming entirely from me, I know. Not from you. What the hell is that? Any other bloggers out there feeling like this lately? Blogs have gotten a bit quieter lately, bloggers posting less often. Has the advent of Twitter pushed us closer to the end? Will we be sick of ourselves soon?
I kind of hope so.
Except then no one’s going to know what I ate for lunch.
I have no idea where I’m going with this.
Talk to me.
I don’t tweet, and my little blog is woefully neglected. It seems like the mere existence of Twitter creates an artificial pressure to always be letting people know the most up-to-date information. If your last Tweet was “commuter traffic is pretty bad today” and you don’t update, will people assume that you have been stuck in traffic for hours, never making it to your destination?
I really don’t see the point of twitter, even if Stephen Fry champions it. I don’t feel the need to be attached to a mobile either. I do love blogs though. Dipping into people’s lives, or the bits of their lives they wnt you to see. With pictures. And, hopefully, some knitting. ;0)
I blog when I feel like it, or have the time and energy. That’s all i want from others. To blog if and when they want to.
Actually, I think a lot of blogs are quieter due to Ravelry !
So, what did you have for breakfast? (Just kidding!) Seriously, we’ll be here when you’re ready. I don’t know many things that you can stick with without a bit of a break now and then. Be nice to yourself; we’ll wait!
Facebook has become this sort of monster for me that I don’t even understand anymore. Too many people, too much feed, no way to keep track of those I actually want to keep up with. I love blogs, though. And I love Google Reader. Every day there’s something to read.
Here’s to perking up again.
When the odd and inexplicable notion to tweet or facebook appears, I take a walk or dip into one of the various on-going books around the place. I blog because it helps sell books. Frankly, I am of an age where the Internet and its peripherals are dismaying. If the whole of cyberspace became a black hole tomorrow, the only thing we would eventually miss would be the simplicity of paying bills from long distance … and maybe the occasional email. While I don’t care what you eat or grow, I do like your musings about writing and the personal tidbits,which I am amazed you actually reveal.
My faux tweet:
Feeling thankful to Cari for the idea to clear my cache.
Next:
Headed to bed early. Have to get up at OMG o’clock tomorrow.
Wait. Is that over the character limit?
WHO GIVES A FUCK?
same here – check in to FB once a day, still don’t know the “ins and outs” of Twitter, also love Google Reader – blog sadly neglected – I just don’t have that much to say these days!
take care of yourself –
It’s summer, doesn’t isn’t this usually when we all hardly ever post because we’re all out living life and such? For me it’s in winter when it’s cold and raining that I spend hours editing pictures and emailing and catching up and (gasp!) updating my blog.
But I’m always rather behind the times…I only recently joined the FB crowd and um tweeting? FB is the equivalent for me…how stalky do people need to be about my life, you know?
Yeah…I hardly ever blog anymore. When I have something to say, I’m too busy doing whatever it is I’m doing to blog about it. And when I have time to blog, I can’t think of anything to say.
When I first joined Twitter I was tweeting all the time. Now I kind of can’t be bothered.
Sometimes I want to just stop reading blogs and Twitter and Facebook entirely and go back to having time to actually make things. But it isn’t as simple as just not reading blogs. They’re not blogs, they’re people. People I care about. I don’t know what the answer is.
I think that many things have cycles, and it’s natural for interest to ebb and flow…and I’ve noticed a slowing of postings on my bloglines list and KR and even a bit on Ravelry (I don’t tweet or facebook, so I don’t know about those venues)… summer, economics, politics, world events? or some odd combination of those and the weather? Quien sabe?
I, for one thoroughly enjoy your musings, little snippets and daily life, it’s like knowing someone else is out there kinda just goin’ along and with some of the the same interests. I am alone a lot, just the way it worked out and I don’t mind most of the time. I HAVE come to sort of depend on the blogs and you have been a favorite since “dogs steal yarn”. I admire your courage for moving across the country to better your life. and I sympanthize with your recent losses, this is just a form of journaling and we get to share so I hopeyou stay and just write whatever you want, I’ll be here
pat
I know exactly what you’re talking about, Cari. I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook — I love that I’ve reconnected with a lot of people I might otherwise have never heard from again, but at the same time, all the quizzes and surveys and foodfights and whatnot drive me a little nuts. It’s quantity over quality, I think. And despite having been a blogger for a pretty good while, I am at heart a very private person and don’t really have a desire to share my every single waking moment with the world.
That said, I do definitely miss the good “old fashioned” blog, where people share longer, more in-depth, almost essay-like chunks of thought and life. Again with quality, rather than quantity.
There are very few things that I feel like doing each and every day, day after day. Things that I have to do on that schedule are…chores.
Twitter and blogging and such are play, not work. As such, play needs to be varied or else it isn’t play anymore.
I’m with you. I’m not on Twitter, but on Facebook. These days, I feel like doings, but as far as talking about what I’m doing — not so much!
I blog when I feel like it, but read (or at least check the ones I read) daily. I don’t plurk or tweet. I don’t facebook or myspace. I do go on ravelry daily, though. I check and see what’s happening in the wild world of fiber. I play with some fiber of my own, chase the toddler, try to figure out what the heck is for dinner, and go on with life.
I don’t have a blog. I’m not on Twitter. I’m not on Facebook. But I love reading blogs. I like your blog: its very real, a little mysterious, grounded, sometimes a teeny bit edgy.
I guess its just what others have said — I like checking in with people, just glimpses, I like knowing that I’m not weird, or that I am in fact weird, or getting inspiration, or just hearing that someone else is trying to make it through the day. I’m here with too much knitting, a huge dissertation, and three kids. It helps.
I haven’t been blogging much lately because I haven’t been knitting much lately. I was on Facebook for a short time but I found it too noisy to be any fun for me.
Most of the things of note in my life for the past eight months or so have been of a personal nature that I don’t feel like sharing with the entire planet. When I’ve got some projects underway that aren’t intimately linked to my personal life, I’ll blog more. Until then I’ll just blog about breaking other peoples’ blogs.
Hi, Cari-
I was on the Glamour magazine blogs earlier today, and they link to the $50/week blog! I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet or not, but here’s the link http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2009/08/could-you-eat-well-and-healthf.html
I’m just coming out of that particular doledrum, I think. I took the entire month of July along with parts of June and August as an inadvertent blog vacation. Sort of a life vacation, too, actually, except for the things that had to be done (work, for instance). I’ve been blogging this week, though.
I’m not on Facebook or Twitter – two less things to feel behind on. I am on Gaia, which I don’t check regularly. Ravelry – same thing. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep up with the friends with whom I can actually be in the same room. Then again, sometimes the virtual ones are easier to deal with… It’s all as the spirit moves and time allows. And thoughts can be wrangled.
So many of my favorite bloggers (mostly knitters but other sorts, as well) have just disappeared lately. Some have announced an end, or a vacation, and some have just vanished. I miss them, and I hope you stick around. Personally, I just email, mostly to friends. I have zero interest in spreading information about myself, my life, my family in other venues, but I am a hypocrite because I like to read about other people’s. It’s like picking up a book, a journal, a serial, and it’s real. Of course, no one can insist that you continue if you don’t feel like it.
I’m with Emma. I find that Ravelry takes a lot more of my time these days. But Rav, lovely as it is in images, just doesn’t give me the ‘voice’, character, heart, soul, and LIFE of the person. I actually find myself adding some Ravelers’ blogs to my blog aggregator. I love a good story and that (in addition to getting to know some amazing people) is what the blogs give me. is it too cliche to love the stories of our lives? Or bits thereof? I blog a lot less, too, these days but I’d miss you if you were totally gone from here.
I send you coffee-drenched hugs…
Well my theory is, of course, that it goes in waves. I say of course because I always seem to be equivocating when asked about this or related subjects. But really, sometimes I feel like I have something to say and other times I feel all talked out, or just like being private.
I don’t think it spells the end, more like the solid middle, when everybody’s gotten over the first blush of excitement about sharing (so very like a love affair, isn’t it?) and is kind of resting and peeking in and out a bit. All fine.
I do enjoy reading those day-in-the (or in the case of tweets, moment-in-the) life posts, even when I feel like my own must be preposterously mundane.
Overexposed!?! TOTALLY. I facebook, I tweet, I blog and I am on a few forums. I have a hard time getting away from people. It seems one person or another in my life always knows what I’m doing. The downfall of internet/facebook/twitter/etc is that if I don’t want to communicate with anyone and just want to fart around online people can still see me, know what I’m doing and contact me! If I’m online and someone calls me on the phone I often get a “you were just on FB 12 seconds ago, I know you’re there.” UGH. I’m not going to boycot anything, but it’d be nice to have some peace occasionally …
Plus — just now I’ve been rereading old love letters from my father to my mother when he was overseas in WWII. Despite the setting, they are mostly quotidien with moments of sweet intimacy. They are a shadow of someone whom I would otherwise not know at all. Will Twitter or Facebook messages survive for another half century? Probably not. Somehow, I hope that blog entries, yours and other’s, even if irregular or unexciting, are less ephemeral and will record your life in this time and this place as letters used to do.
I was gifted a digital camera. I never used it. Then my 35mm’s lens broke. I started blogging to force myself to use the new camera, and to give myself something to do recovering from injury (when walking to the mailbox, and photographing maple tree buds took 30 minutes!). The digital camera is better for documentary stuff, the types of shots I wouldn’t waste film on previously. I write very little in it, and my known audience consists entirely of my better half.
Low expectations are the key to its survival!
I was just catching up on the $50/week blog and saw your bagel post. I’m psyched! I’ll let you know when I get around to trying it. Thanks for your detailed recipe.
Cari, I love how you put words together, so anything you have to say, I want to read. I don’t twitter, just taking baby steps into Facebook.
Thought you might have reported on the Sock Summit-didn’t you even go to ogle and touch some yarn?
oh, how i can hear you so clearly. the whole twitter thing is a bit too much. i occ check in but i am not really looking for updates, maybe just gems of wisdom that slip though? not sure.
the blog is killing me lately. i want to write but find myself without time. then i read another innocuous post and feels time wasted. not sure where to go with this either.
FB and i do not get along, just never have. i miss people writing but not sure what it is exactly that i miss, you know?
blog angst. i think it is time for me to turn it off and pick up my knitting.
but obviously i just can’t. arg.
i think i am missing the real part of life sometimes by being here, not wanting to miss anything in the blog part of life. and that makes me feel a bit too unbalanced. guess i will just struggle along with you in this place. until a flash of brilliance hits. or something.
Cari, you can’t give it up, you just won a Superior Scribbler Award!! Come on by my blog to check it out!
Did you go to the sock summit?
Facebook makes me feel awkward – like when your cousin tries to kiss you at a wedding awkward. But I twitter pretty regularly…I like reading the lunch time reports and various and sundry tweets. It keeps me feeling like I’m working with cooler people than I am. My little cubicle life gets lonely. Twitter makes me feel less…cubified.
Blogging is a bit different. I’ve been trying to see if I can make it a year with a post a day. It’s been a stretch, but I’m enjoying the challenge. What I like about the blog (besides the interaction with people and the online friends I’ve made) is that it reads like a little chronicle of me. I can page back several years and see what was going on – the minutiae I’ve forgotten.
I’m sure that Samuel Pepys would have been blogging and twittering, were he alive today.
i started a blog when i moved across the country (from vancouver to newfoundland) because this was before the days of facebook and i wanted a place to post pics and give updates. after about a year it dwindled out… and then i broke up with the person i was with and i didn’t want him checking in, so i ignored it and eventually i set up a new blog. which i have resoundingly ignored. i think if i gave myself the challenge of blogging every day i’d enjoy it, but i’m too busy right now (i guess that’s where the “challenge” comes in to play…). plus, it seems pointless to talk about my knitting there since i do that on ravelry. photos of the vacation/party/day at the park? loaded and tagged on facebook… it seems that all these online social networking tools have brought us together but at the same time removed that personal element of the blog – the daily musings and random thoughts (that are longer than 140-characters).
i was on twitter for about 2 days. i decided pretty quickly that i didn’t care what anyone was doing. my husband and i both signed up, tweeted a few times, watched the tweets going back and forth and deleted our accounts. we sort of looked at each other and decided that if we really wanted to know what our friend craig was eating for breakfast we could walk down the road, look in his window and find out. 🙂
i don’t care how often people post on their blogs – most of my google reader is full of blogs that i enjoy whenever there are postings. i either like what you say, what you make, or what you wear (yes, the sartorialist is on my top 10 list). and between all of us, not a day goes by that someone doesn’t have something to share.
I never have gotten the fascination of Twitter and telling the world every inane thought you have or what you just ate. I’d rather read a blog about someone’s garden or what they’re knitting. I find blogs so much more interesting.
Blogs and Twitter and FB are all mostly just flavors of the day…before them were the e-mail groups/listservs and chat rooms… But I count myself lucky for being involved in the online community–I have made friends electronically and then met them in person, and it is an amazing thing–they are just as funny/entertaining/neurotic in person as they are in their tweets or blog entries.
I’ve had to move twice in the last four years, and both times I managed to connect with people with whom I’d been corresponding (in one form or another) in person–and I count those people as dear friends. So yeah, I’m a big fan on the online communities. But just like at a party, sometimes all you want to do is hang out on the fringes and just listen–or even stay off the party circuit altogether for a while. Twitter reminds me of those random voices/blurbs you overhear at a busy party–most of them are pretty stupid, some are pretty scary, and others are just downright fascinating or hilarious. I’m just enjoying the party
I reckon Twitter is a step too far in the self-obsessed direction and I haven’t been tempted. It irritates me that a fairly well-known UK designer has made her latest KAL only available to Twitterers (or what ever the collective name is). Grump!
I get that from time to time. It’s ennui or like when your car engine needs a tune up because the points and plugs are covered with gunk and need to be cleaned or replaced or whatever it is they do. I don’t know. I’m not mechanical. I periodically feel disenchanted with writing, reading, and the internet, but not usually all at the same time. If they all happen at once and I also don’t feel like cooking–I know something is wrong.
Hi, first time on your blog. Found you while searching for Lopi projects that others have knitted. Loved seeing your 2006 stash reduction.
There must be something in the air or water. I felt the same way as you. Overexposed, since joining FB last month and already have been on Twitter all summer plus blogging for 4+ years.
Here is a post I blogged 8/13 saying same thing about ‘too much sharing’ and feeling too exposed.
I don’t link my real name or FB to my blog or Twitter. I don’t want “all of my worlds colliding” and all the people from different areas of my life mixing together. LOL.
have a great day!
http://thethinkingmother.blogspot.com/2009/08/not-feeling-wordy-or-ponderous-lately.html
Twitter has sorta killed my blogging, but I was also killing it myself by not taking the time to write. I’m over Facebook–the fun of catching up with old friends has passed sorta like a high school reunion and now I still talk with the people I used to talk with.
There will still be a place for my blog because it’s a place where I keep my knitting and it’s a bit like a scrapbook of my family life. I like that I have it to look back on. It’s much less fleeting than Twitter.