writing for me.
monday, january 16th, 2023.
I've come to a realization: I really love writing, but I really don't like writing for an audience. I've got pages and pages of journal entries, but whenever I do the POSSE thing I worry about how my writing will be received. I share a post I wrote on the fediverse and I'm metaphorically biting my nails, waiting to see if anyone likes it.
Pah! A foolish game, that.
Why, then, do I write?
For practice and enjoyment. Forgive my indulgences, but sometimes I entertain the thought of writing a memoir or some interesting work of fiction. In order to get there, to be able to craft an enjoyable work, I need to keep on typing.
For a year or so, my online writing was on the Gopher and Gemini protocols. That community felt and still feels a lot more tightly-knit. Long form writing is the substance there, and I adore the smolnet for that. But, for now, I don't think those protocols are for me. Everything there is mirrored to HTTP, so it's not a particularly exclusive space:
I figured I'd skip the middle man and host my writing here on the web. I wrestled with CSS for a while and got my website looking how I'd like: easy to read, the aesthetic of a technical volume, and low bandwidth.
From time to time, I'll poke around Gemini and Gopher. It's still a great place for reading— there are some very kind and thoughtful folks that contribute to the medium. Really, it's just a cozy place to be. The medium is light, the clients many, and the content superb.
I keep circling back to my writing about degaming my habits. Specifically, what Shufei said about parasocial media. Mainly, I'm weighing the pros and cons of even participating on the fediverse. It reminds me of the internal back-and-forth monologue I had going before deleting my Facebook and Instagram accounts. It was always, "this is the only way I can find out about events," or "this is where my favorite artists are." Those benefits were paid for by the addictiveness and base-level anxiety I felt while on those sites.
Always that one trailing thing that made it so difficult to leave.
Is there such a thing for the fediverse? I managed to leave Facebook and Instagram just fine, after all. Perhaps the juice isn't worth the squeeze!
Until next time, be well. :)