From time to time I'll have a purge, noting to myself that there has been feature creep but there is a disparity between the public face of the site and what goes on in the background.
I look at the site now, with the Daily view as default, and wonder where it could go from here. Beyond culling the actual Today view (with its full menu and links to previous days, thus making the blog truly ephemeral) I think I would need to start looking at that background activity.
I'm rarely on micro.blog these days - using it mainly as a distribution and comment system - so have considered removing the RSS feed from my account there. Again. This would mean less engagement, relying on people subscribing to the feed directly. Then I think about removing support for webmentions as the replies from micro.blog form the bulk of any I receive.
I don't send that many external webmentions and most of the sites I "like" in posts don't support indieweb technologies so how much would I be really be loosing out on? Then again, one of the main uses I have for webmentions is my "related posts" functionality which I would be unhappy to lose.
And then I wonder what's behind all this? Why do I feel the constant need to change things, pare them down? Some of the things I've added have definitely been of the "because I can" variety, there for the sake of curiosity and to see if I could get them to work. But why the need to tinker?
I'm reminded of a recent comment from Bix:
"Who cares?"
But, for whatever reason, I do.
Thinking back to Stephen Pressfield's post yesterday maybe the changes are all a surrogate for what I haven't done, what I continue to not do. Maybe they are the manifestations of the pain and self-reproach from having this unlived life and unfulfilled potential.
Very likely.
Knowing this to be the case it befalls on me to do something about it and I believe a change in direction in the coming months will do just that, giving me a goal and some much needed additional purpose. I'm really looking forward to sharing.
In the meantime I just have to get over myself, try to get on with what's important, focus rather than give in the distractions of that self-reproach.
Easier said than done.
@colinwalker I don't know if it came across this way, but my "who cares?" wasn't a passing of judgement on you publishing, but, really, more specifically about me being online in general. (Hence why I deleted my Instagram and Twitter yesterday.)
@bix Yeah, I took it as a general apathy about social so don't worry about that. Welcome to the Twitterless, I've found it to be far less stressful.
@colinwalker It's a mixed bag for me, as I am basically incapable of maintaining individual contact with people; the one benefit of a feed of people broadcasting what they're up to.
Only reading your site via RSS. I came here to check out the minimal look. I really like it.
I also really like ephemeral idea moving towards removing the Today view. If you want things on context day after day. Sub. It also really depends on attitudes towards what one's blog 'is' an archive or 'these are my thoughts right now'.
I've been thinking i'd like a second feed on my site thats microbloggy. Use it for photos and twitter length thoughts etc. Have it show up on my home page. And offer 3 feeds. Full firehose, Microthoughts, Blog posts.
Not sure tho.
I've rejoined Micro.blog, so I can comment on some folks' posts. It's not ideal, I have to do a couple of extra steps, but it works. It would be awesome if a WebMention from my blog could show up on Micro.blog, but I'm not clear on what would need to change to make that happen.
Regarding my blog, I just focus on blogging about what I want to, when I want to. If I get responses, that's a bonus, but not why I hit Publish.
Thanks Jay. You've got me thinking and there'll be a follow up soon.
External webmentions can show up on micro.blog but only under certain circumstances related to being linked to accounts etc. Manton would be the best person to ask.
I used to have separate feeds for microposts and longer posts but as I often cross-referenced it just made sense to pull them all back together in one feed, especially when the blog became more of a stream of consciousness type affair.
Manton Reece recently rolled out Micro.blog 2.0 with a whole bunch of improvements across the web and native apps; it's great to see him constantly improving the service and getting more people back into blogging regularly. When I mentioned yesterday that I mainly use m.b as a commenting system Alan remarked that he had returned to the service so he could comment on the blogs of others but wanted to be able to send webmentions from his own blog instead. External webmentions have always worked to a degree on micro.blog but the site sending them has to be linked to a live account in order to be accepted and show - makes sense. In the past I've always gone back to m.b in order to reply to comments as it seemed more reliable but, inspired by Alan, I thought I'd give it a test today. Here's a reply to a comment as posted on my blog:
And here it is in situ on micro.blog:
I didn't think that the external webmention auto-added the person's @name that you were replying to which is why I always went back to micro.blog. Is that an improvement in v2.0 or am I just remembering it wrong? In any event, that this works properly means that I can always do so directly from the blog which will make replies more obvious. Good stuff!
Jay's comment on yesterday's post about the blog's design got me thinking again about what a blog actually is. He remarked that how you think about a blog is, at least partly, determined by if you see it as an archive or just "thoughts right now" and this goes back to my previous musings about ephemerality: the daily blank slate, as inspired by Dave Winer and Drew Coffman. Is a blog a place to check in on someone at any given point or is it an historical record? My blog is still both but currently favours the former because it defaults to the Daily view without direct links to previous days or the archive. Definitions are, or should be, largely irrelevant now; a blog is whatever you make it, in my opinion, and I've moved so far from what tradition would call a blog. Still, the notion of it being either an archive or "of the moment" is really interesting. I've written before how my changes in focus over the years have meant that older posts no longer reflect who I am as a blogger or as a person. The shift from largely thematic to a mostly personal site made much of the pre-2016 blog irrelevant if you were using it to gain an understanding of who I am. In that respect there is mixed feeling about, and mixed value of, the archive. Even since 2016 I am unsure as to the value of much of what has been written and, let's face it, who actually goes back and reads all the old stuff? I will link to various posts and be self-referential to display a train of thought over time (I could pepper this whole post with links) but most of it can be ignored and is forgotten. I think a personal blog is like a relationship, a "getting to know you" over time experience. As Jay mentioned in his comment:
When we meet people we don't go back through their history to decide if we want to be friends based on everything that's happened before. We jump in at the "here and now" and take a chance, picking stuff up as we go along. As we get to know each other more detail will be filled in as things get shared, we start to build up a picture but it is a gradual process. I now see a blog as the same. Old posts are like memories, stories we may recount to new friends when circumstance demands their telling. We grow together. I agonised for days over what to put on my "required reading" page but is one really necessary? Do visitors need a potted history or are they, just like in a relationship, going to start from "here" and take a chance. If it doesn't work out we just go our separate ways. We are social animals and it's nice to share, nice to have touch points with others. A blog is a touch point, a way of letting people know what's been happening, what we're thinking or feeling, but it is as much for the author (if not more) as the audience. Blogs used to be very specific things, there were rules and requirements for something to be so named. Things and times change; social networks forever altered everything we knew about connecting online and it is only natural for blogs to alter as well. Blogs are not set in stone, beholden to ideas from 20 years ago, they can and should adapt to the current zeitgeist and beyond, be disruptive rather than conformist. Blogs should be as individual as the person writing them - their appearance and how they work as well as the content.