Falling Off The Social Graph

After blogging for over 13 years on this site and having a personal web presence (“being my own webmaster” as I imagine cool kids said back then) for years before that, I have rode a wave of how much to make your site an expression of yourself and how much to make it something for an audience.

If you look through the archives, you’ll see silly things like my class schedule one semester in college—things that no one really cares about besides me, but I wanted to share.

You’ll find major life events being announced. A decision not to enter seminary. Announcing twins (which broke the one-day viewership record on this site easily). Things that everyone who has a passing interest in me would find notable.

You’ll see me still working through grief and other personal issues. Things that random people in the same situation may find helpful.

You’ll find random technology posts on how things are changing or how to setup Let’s Encrypt.

Social media, SEO, and gaining an audience has been a major part of the site’s evolution. My summer semester class schedule would likely not be a post on this site—something for Twitter or Facebook, if that. I’ve written my posts in certain ways to get the most points from Yoast. I’ve made very specific choices about excerpts to craft the best Open Graph snippet. I’ve saved a single post to Buffer multiple times so that everyone across the world would see me announce my latest post at exactly the right time.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been posting on here regularly. A couple weeks, daily, before Christmas, and now, a couple more weeks. Some posts, I am proud of and things I want to share with the world. That should be on Facebook. The post about using Let’s Encrypt—that’s current and relevant to many of my Twitter followers. That should go on there.

But, should I only post those things on my own site? Must I share everything with my social graph? Can I write in the open to fulfill my desire of expression rather than a desire for praise and vanity—I am full of myself a fair amount of the time.

I’m going to take a step back and be more deliberate. I’m going back to my roots of blogging. I’m writing here for me. If I think I wrote something of interest, I’ll share it. If I wrote something that I don’t really care if anyone else reads, I won’t. Will I write things specifically to be shared? Sometimes. Will I refrain from writing something because I’m not sure what people on Facebook would say? No.

If you want to follow my blog, great. Let that be a deliberate choice for you. If you only want to see a random selection of things from my site, stick with friending me on Facebook or following me on Twitter.

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