Scattered impulses

[alicebentley]

I am tempted and teased by the lure of social media, spending much enjoyable time cruising FaceBook, Twitter and Tumblr which give me a brief subset of what my friends and my people are doing. But I'm rarely driven to post, almost as rare to comment.

And I think I should be doing better than that. It's not that I have nothing at all going on - it's that I have trouble reducing my scattered thoughts to concise presentations. And I most especially have trouble producing well-spoken arguments to posts where I want to discuss or refute the OP.

I know the feeling well from in-person conversations. There are topics I have opinions and information about, but whether I want to chance engaging depends so very much on who else is part of the discussion. Some people I'm shy about revealing my ignorance to. (And yet it's such a good way to learn more.) Some people have set-in-stone opinions that I'm no longer interested in flailing against. (But shouldn't they experience at least an occasional flailing?) Posting on social media is the worst of both worlds, as you only somewhat know who your audience is, and have very limited ways to turn posts into conversations.

Much of what I start writing about becomes too inconsequential to share. (That outbuilding I am never going to construct as there are better, cheaper ways to get similar results. The bird-house business I invented for my MBA assignment that had all sorts of clever aspects, but no, I'm not planning on launching a new career to get it to exist.)

And then there are the topics that I *do* think there's some interest in, but I haven't found the right place to stage them, or cut the time into my life to produce them.

This post is me trying to get my head around the problem, and encourage myself to Find the right space, Make the time, and Do the thing. I recently dropped in hours at work (so that others with more need could have them) and I'm thinking now should be the perfect storm of influences to drive me to do this.

Now, is DreamWidth a place for this? I dunno.

Comments

[pameladean]

I have some similar issues, and either don't post or write quotidian accounts of life. I find these valuable later on, at least.

It's nice to see you!

P.

[min8ive]

I also feel the same way sometimes, but I guess I've gotten used to putting things out there, and have limited my audience to those I've gotten positive feedback from in the past. That said, my audience is only a handful of people here on Dreamwidth, since most are on FB or never migrated over from LJ.

FB used to be a place to throw out random thoughts, but now it feels weird to post anything that doesn't pertain to the problems of the world there now. My first-world problems.

Actually, I came here today to post something like that myself, but saw your post before I had a chance to, so here it is. :-)

[minnehaha]

I always like to hear what people are up to and thinking about.

K.