When it's over, it's over
By sandee
I've decided I'm done with shopping and blogging in the traditional sense.
Truth is, I have a bit more Christmas purchasing to do, but I'm just gonna stop. I am at peace with the notion of giving a less-than-perfect gift. I am fighting the compulsion to "round out a package with something small." I am refusing to match the unexpected present.
Between an increase in job responsibilities and holiday obligations, shopping somehow morphed from an enjoyable, mindless escape into a major drag on so many levels. It sucked up all of my free time, and if you judged my state of mind solely on my recent blog entries, occupied much of my waking moments.
Most relevant for your purposes, I never got around to blogging about parking secrets and top iPhone apps like I said I would — although, I will share one tip that a colleague let drop: park in the Angelo Pietro restaurant parking lot on Kapiolani Boulevard and walk over to Ala Moana.
This constant feeling of just barely hanging on, which was more or less seasonal in the past, has become a constant hum in my head as our industry changes and The Advertiser along with it.
I've been shedding a lot of nonessential duties at work, and I will be letting go of this blog as a regular weekly entry. What I'd like to do instead is Twitter, and let the feed become the blog.
If I were alone in this sense that we're all starving for time, then giving up regular blogging would feel like an induction into wimphood. But even digital evangelists like Jason Calacanis are finding blogging too time-consuming. Where blogging used to be the solution to having no time to write a story, Twitter is now my answer to having no time for blogging.
So, I'll pump out one more blog on Thursday and then we'll go dark until we can figure out how the Twitter feed will work. Meanwhile, follow me @sandybeach on Twitter and let me know if you want me to follow you. I promise not to stalk.
Hawaii Hacks
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Pretty amazing isn't it, how Twitter can change your perspective about blogging. I was feeling something similar about a year ago, and before I began Twittering because I was using Tumblr as my micro-blogging experiment: It was so incredibly fast and easy (especially because I had no commenting app for it) and it caused me to wonder why I went through all the "trouble" of blogging.
I figured out that I was getting a bit hung up on "blogging" as a verb, and I was better off treating it as a noun and a platform option. I started to focus on "writing" as my better verb - what did I want to write (and feel the need to write) and what was the message to be about? Then having decided that much, would a blog serve my purpose, would Tumblr or Twitter - or would another platform be best? Should I write another book instead?
Mixed in with all that was the community question; which community, local, social and network/partnered was I really serving? Which should I be interacting with better and serving?
And now here I am, about a year later, and writing the Say “Alaka‘i” blog for The Honolulu Advertiser and loving it! For me it was a good thing the opportunity didn’t come at that earlier time, for in my blogging overwhelm back then I’d probably have said no! My goal now is to have our readers here at The Honolulu Advertiser feel happy about it too, feeling we can communicate well within this community, and that they are well served.
Mahalo to you Sandee for that opportunity, and I shall look forward to our talking story more while on Twitter.
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Thanks, Rosa! I hope I can arrive at a time, as you have, when blogging is satisfying again. Right now, lacking time, I'm feeling that Twitter is about all I can manage, although having only 140 characters can be harder than blogging at will!