I haven’t made a farewell note — I probably won’t, to be honest — but I’m trying to unstick myself from Facebook and Twitter (BlueSky seems non-toxic so far, with a robust fountain pen community, and Insta, however much I mistrust Meta/Zuck, makes Margaret laugh). My hope-plan entails leaving my accounts in place, leaving links to my blog and other pointers away from Face/X.
Partly I’m leaving in order to put my energy where my mouth is: on the blog. I still keep my news reader alive and refreshed, and I have been trying to keep up a reasonably consistent frequency of blog entries. But I realised that I was blogging less because I was reading less; and I’m reading less partly because my workload (first at Seabury, then at Glasgow, then especially at St Stephen’s House) has cracked my concentration, but also partly because Twit/Book had trained me to read only snippets, and to read snippets obsessively. I read social-media-panic reports sceptically, but I can’t deny my own experience: it’s easy for me to spend an hour scrolling through the feeds of my very, very many Facebook and Twitter friends, and it’s hard for me to sit down and immerse myself in a fictional world, and much harder still to read through an essay in biblical studies.
I still have work to do. I can’t let that pattern stand unchallenged.
So I will be trying, trying, trying to break the spell.
It’s quite a moment. I’m watching so many people bouncing around trying to figure out what to do and I keep saying “blogging is right here! Where it’s always been! Come back!”
Anyway, I like your posts. Even the little diary entries. I like to know that you’re out there doing your work, running your miles, praying your prayers.
Maybe others will join us.
I was never crazy about blogrings, but blogrolls should come back. And the blogs+newsreaders combination is so much more sensible than siloed social media; I wish people would takee the tiny bit of extra effort to start their own social media ( = a blog).