Thoughts on Social Media and Blogging

 

1/16/25 During the holidays, I donated to a food drive organized by
a neighborhood cake bakery. In exchange for my donation, I was 
given a coupon that I could redeem in January for a free slice of cake!

Many friends and others I follow on Facebook and Instagram are leaving those platforms due to recent changes in how our data are used, political stances of the platforms’ owners, and other significant reasons. I’ve long been ambivalent about all social media, and these changes are only deepening my concerns. I haven’t decided when or whether I’ll leave Facebook or Instagram, but for now, I’m staying. If I do leave, I will likely simply stay off social media altogether rather than flee to Bluesky as others are doing. I’m sure it’s better than FB and IG now, but who’s to say it won’t get gobbled up by a nefarious entity a few years down the line, and then we’d be back where we started. (That’s how I ended up on Instagram – it was seen as the social media darling that was so much better than Facebook – until it became Facebook.)

1/27/25 Light rail commuter, northbound

Regardless of my eventual decisions about any of that, what I am certain about is that I will continue to blog here indefinitely. My blog doesn’t serve the same purposes as social media (and sadly, it does not help me stay connected to certain people I would otherwise probably lose touch with if we weren’t on Facebook, which is one reason I remain there). But it has always been more satisfying to me to blog than to participate in social media. If it weren’t, I would not have kept this up nearly daily for close to 13 years (long, long past the point when blogging was declared dead).

Even though I don’t know most of my blog readers any more than I do my Instagram followers, I somehow feel safer and less vulnerable here on my blog compared to being “out there.” I share many things here that I don’t share on Facebook or Instagram. Most important to me, my blog gives me the space and time to reflect and think and write and revise (and proofread carefully!), none of which is easily possible when I’m trying to type with my finger and dodge autocorrections on my phone screen.

1/27/25 Light rail commuter, southbound

Anyway, this is all just a long-winded, thinking-aloud preamble to my real message today, which is to thank you for your readership. Whether you’ve been with me since the beginning or joined me more recently, I appreciate that you come along on my daily mutterings about sketching, pencils, walking, downsizing, my creative process or whatever else I’m going on about. I’d still be muttering here even if you weren’t reading, but it does make me happy to know that you are.

(Sketches shown here are apropos of nothing, but perhaps they reflect the rambling nature of today’s post.)

1/28/25 Roofers, Maple Leaf neighborhood