I tried a handwritten five-year journal and two year-long journals. I bought nice hardcover notebooks and a fancy new pen even, but I came to associate this type of journaling as a chore. I merely rehashed details of the mundanity of my day, which has its merit to some degree. But I use my calendar app for noting travel, dinners out, friends in town, or my workout schedule; I employ the search function in my photos to trigger a memory. Writing down these details no longer suited me.
Then I heard murmurings of the return of the indie web. I was never truly a part of it back in the day, despite my own attempts at a blog and daily photos. I revisited some of those old blog posts, and ho boy, those will remain for my eyes only, occupying a tiny sector of my storage space.
For about a year I maintained a recipe blog on Medium. And then one day I deleted all my posts and my profile. I honestly don’t even remember what compelled me to do so, other than just being “done.”
The current status of the giant social platforms has me questioning my decision to remain there – this is mostly directed at Instagram. I took my data and abandoned the bird site when Elmo took over, opting for Mastodon. And I proudly never succumbed to the initial allure of Facebook. I do not need LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, et al. I am playing around with Retro and Pixelfed, trying to find my footing. Ravelry, despite accessibility issues that drove many users away, is the home for my knitting pursuits. Perhaps I do miss Flickr (the old Flickr), but I have yet to shell out the subscription fee to rejoin.
All this to say, and what others have been saying, own your own content.
I don’t have a specific direction for this space, other than to write what I want, when I want. I have thoughts about things that I never wanted to hand-write in a journal. I have creative outlets that I occasionally wish to highlight. I sometimes stumble upon cool stuff that maybe warrants a hat tip.
The encouragement to pursue this comes from my life partner and best friend, Naz, who naturally put this site together for me. I had a hand in the newsletter about our road-tripping adventures, and I found I actually enjoyed tinkering with words again.
Anyway, follow along. Or not. But now I can be here as long as I like without having to uproot or reintroduce myself again.