Adrift from my social/virtual networks for nearly 6 months makes it quite interesting (interesting and scary) to begin participating again. I’ve been doing a fair bit of txting and messaging, but that’s all one-to-one stuff and I must say I left the blogging thing till last. Why? Well it’s an affinity thing and when you’ve been out of the loop it’s like starting all over again. One-to-many, more a performance, a performance of a blogging identity that’s been mothballed. You know how time moves fast with bloggers and digital culture in general and I had the feeling I had lots of homework to do. For a start there’s this great looking, but unfamiliar writing space for Blogtrax…some new tools here, but it looks very good. (I’m glad Dr J did this, it’s obviously an improvement - I’ve got lots to learn!). Then there’s all the posts on here I haven’t read yet. And that’s before I start catching up on all the other posts in my networks. I think I’ve decided it’s pointless trying to catch up on anything I’ve missed. Do you really miss stuff? Missing stuff implies that there’s a sort of ideal state in which you’ve read everything by everybody. Anyway that was just the feeling I had.
Finally, today, after thinking about it and then trying to avoid thinking about it and then trying to do it without thinking about it too much I plunged in. Blogged my first post on my personal blog and then forgot about it. A couple of hours later found myself thinking that people who used to read it must have, by now, given up even thinking about it, let alone visiting it. So, that’s interesting. Just as it was when I started. No audience. Then slowly I realised that some of my friends were checking it. I can watch this happen again and note that here.
On Flickr - I think that’s now quite definitely in this research frame - a few new comments (nice) and a whole new distribution of views. So what was popular when I left has now sunk down the charts and some wall-art, at first almost ignored, has attracted attention. Anyway, here I am again, posting in this new place and secretly hoping that it won’t come out all wonky and show me up!