So here I am, sitting here, months after I proudly announced to the World (or, at least, the part that listens to me) that I was returning to blogging… and I’m writing my first post since then.
Oh, I was completely sincere in my intentions, as I have been about a great many things in life that I want(ed) to do but, as is all too often the case, the follow-through was a tad… lacking.
So, uh… sorry about that.
This does, however, bring up an interesting notion, one that seems almost a contradiction in this day and age of near constant connection to an oh-so-wired world. It seems that “Real Life” got in the way.
Our lives are so attached to the internet and, with the massive array of social media tools available, we can chat, rant and otherwise express ourselves just about anywhere and anytime. We have a plethora of devices at our fingertips, loaded with apps that give us an ever increasing ease of access to the vastness of information, entertainment and social connections on offer. Magical. We have no excuse not to tweet, text, post and chat!
But what of the blog?
Blogs are one aspect of content creation on the internet that require some time and thought. I mean, you actually have to take the time to come up with a topic, your perspective on it, and then put the whole thing into a (hopefully) coherent package. And, since there’s no one-touch-creation or instantly-make-my-thoughts-into-words button, “time” is the operative word.
I get ideas for blog posts all the time, nearly every day, as I find myself needing well more than 140 characters to express a thought. Problem is, I also have stuff that needs to get done in the physical realm and, more often than not, the actual preempts the virtual. “Now hang on!” I hear you say, “You’re telling us that work keeps you from being free to Facebook? Too tied up to tweet?? Too busy to blog??? Dude… You’re doing it wrong!”
I know, I KNOW!!!
Nowadays, it’s supposed to be the other way around, isn’t it? Workplace productivity plummeting as social media usage skyrockets, right? Yeah, I don’t understand it either… Where are my modern priorities?!?
Hey look, I used to live in that world – neck deep! I’ve wasted some serious time online, so I know what things look like from the other side of the fence! Maybe it’s a natural tipping point, maybe just a swing of the pendulum, or maybe I’m (God forbid!) growing up?!? But it’s true, y’know. Kids, dog, work, house, etc… these things all need attention every day and, in the end, my digital thoughts just sit in my Drafts folder, as the vacuum of Real Life sucks up my daily allotment of time.
I should mention, for those of you wondering what on earth I do with my evenings, that by the time the kids are in bed and I’ve had some quality time with my lovely wife, I can barely focus my eyes on the keyboard, let alone my brain on the words I want to write! 😉
Now, I know that, in some ways, this concept is nothing new. I mean, we all have lives in which our “reality” preempts a life’s worth of things we’d rather be doing, but I can’t help but find it funny that this Digital Man’s life has become, to a degree, the opposite of the world in which I used to play with daily fervor and great abandon… Ahh, abandon…
Anyway, with the new intention of a better work/life balance (digital/analog balance?) I will promise to try to make a better effort to endeavour to find the time to work at blogging!
Famous last words. 😉
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