Note: it’s hard to use Facebook and to blog at the same time, especially (I suspect) for us long-time bloggers. Especially at the end of a tiring term. Especially with various writing obligations pending. Especially when my metabolism is still adjusting to intercontinental life. But mostly, I’d bet, because of Facebook.
When I write for my blog, I’m addressing a broader, vaguer readership. I’m not thinking about keeping things short and punchy, light and noncommittal. When I write for my blog, the data is stored on my server space, and comments are under my watchful eye. When I write for my blog, I can hyperlink the way I choose, and make connections to topics I’ve blogged earlier (such as “Glasgow”). I can change the look of my blog (even though I haven’t for years), I can use CSS and tags and put tags on the posts, make categories, and so on. And did I mention all the data is on my server, not Mark Zuckerberg’s?
I’ll try to keep blogging, try to work it up to a more regular, more substantive pace. And I’ll be posting status updates on Facebook steadily, too.
Well, for what it’s worth, I think of Facebook as training wheels for a blog. It’s the warm-up, it’s the warm-fuzzy of being part of your pod of peeps and saying whatever and seeing if it floats to the top or not.
On Facebook I have been writing prolifically and in a variety of styles as the spirit has so moved, even as I know that my great variety of friends can all see what I’ve written: the thick-or-thin friends of my high school years, the political radicals of my world-changing years, the business strategy people of my money-making years, the bikers and bartenders of my old age and (most importantly) my various family members, especially my daughter. I’ve been wanting to write a blog for years and have had a URL for a long time, but I had to see if there was a single me that could speak to my huge diversity of friends and somehow remain true to myself in the process.
So I have written and written and written and it’s been very therapeutic. And yes, it does bother me that all that content is on someone else’s server but the payoff for that high price has been worth it. I found my public voice: sometimes silly, sometimes thoughtful, rarely profound, occasionally witty. I had to do this, to throw it all into one big soup and be one unified me in front of all of them.
If I hadn’t done that, I would’ve always been fidgeting with the voice issue, wondering which group I should “be like” on my blog, and itching nervously that I what I was saying to the bikers would somehow offend the biz strat crowd. I’ve managed to find the sweet spot through Facebook. Not that it’s great writing, and not that it’s a blog, but *now* I feel really ready. Now if I can just shake this addiction to Farmville …
You can also link your blog feed into your facebook a/c, so that new blog entries come up as new notes on facebook.