Blogs are like buses. Don't see one for ages, and then two come along at once.
As a representative of a web company that promotes blogging and social media, it's hard to then excuse myself when I don't participate.
I'm going to have a go though ;)
The first restricting factor is that I'm genuinely very busy. There's always a mountain of work to do at Lingo. I swear that people don't understand all that goes into the day to day operation of the business, and the customer management side of things can be very demanding. Don't get me wrong, I'm not moaning, I love it, it's just very time consuming.
Recently, as the photo montage attempts to demonstrate; there's been lots to take pictures of for the web; photos of food, guttering, buses, cakes, people and places. This was just in one week. If you want to see the individual pictures (including the ones of Tom....more on that later) then just click the picture...
Secondly, I live alone. I therefore have to do ALL the housework, cooking, cleaning, shopping, DIY, gardening, blah blah blahing myself. No support, no sharing etc. I'm sure I'm just like many others in that respect, but if you live with parents or you're in a couple... you're sharing. Like I said before, I'm not moaning... I'm just explaining. I also
try have something of a social life, (though that has been slipping lately) and I have some sort of exercise routine too - I go to the gym and go running once each week...normally!
In addition to that, and perhaps what I wanted to get off my chest more than anything; I'm going through a phase of negativity towards social media at the moment. Over share is rife. Every time I read a status update or tweet about what someone had for dinner I cringe. Not at the (sometimesvery unimaginative menu choices) but because, I feel that unless you're a chef, unless you have found some amazingly unusual culinary taste sensation, are reviewing an eatery, or you have just made your first cake, why clog up the social sphere with such inane babble? It's Sunday, nearly 11, here in the UK as I write this, (though it will probably be sometime later by the time I publish). I can comfortably predict that in the next few hours, facebook will turn in to a stream of "roast" updates. We all eat! On Sundays, yes, it's likely to be a roast. You don't neeeeeed to tell everyone that, do you? Do you not have something better to tell us? No? Then please, don't bother. It's like joining a conversation and saying "I can talk."
Food related status updates are the worst, but there are others just as bad. Football/rugby general sports shouts, "come on you (insert team name here)" or what about bad photos, countdowns to holidays, "happy birthdays" that say only "happy birthday" and generally unimaginative wall posts. I can go on but you don't need me to. You catch my drift. Pointless prattle online is much like in real life face-to-face conversations, and social gatherings, there's always a plentiful supply of useless, trivial drivel that you do well to avoid. In among the babble there will be gems of genuinely interesting information. It's just a shame that to avoid the dross on your 'news feed' you have to actually scroll past it... and in doing so, in many respects, you have to process it before discarding it. You scan it, and dismiss it, scan, dismiss, occasionally you find something you like, and you might click to show you 'like it' as much as anything to try to encourage others to do better. Information overload is giving me a headache. Yes, I can go and 'unfollow, unfriend or filter' to customise my feed. But these all require action. Even clicking 'IGNORE' is taking additional action. Truth be known, the only action I'm happy to take to ignore is none; I just don't log in.
I was a big fan of 'likes' - I suppose I still am, but what I dislike A LOT now, is updates just to get likes. Oh, so needy and nasty. 'Share if your kids mean the world to you'. Like this, like that....ohhhhh!
I'm not 'better than' or 'bored of' 'it'. I'm just breaking the habit more now, reducing the shockingly high amount of time I was spending online not benefiting from any of this, and I'm getting more passionate about my advice for good content, good writing. I use watchwords to advise customers on composition.
BUT on the flip side. I'm often left with a sense that I need to write. My Grandfather was a published author. My Mum has been writing a book for some years and, while I know I'm probably not about to turn out a best seller any time soon, I feel compelled to write.
Composition for me is important. Being able to express thoughts via a blog online is a privilege. So I'm just changing my approach slightly and I've been thinking about this for a while. It's just hard to explain.
So, yeh, spring so far has been busy for me.
I better get on with writing that other blog post...now I've talked myself into it...
Thanks for listening.
