Excursions

I write many forms of posts & enjoy them all. But as my friends would know, my love for them is not equal. So then, why do I continue to publish them? An apt metaphor from Robin Sloan made me ponder on the same today. I published a few thoughts, a healthy reminder on the same.

I wonder if no one on Micro.blog creates any type of long-form posts using the web editor. I can’t be the only one who finds this interface too limiting. It is suitable only for short updates. The goal of keeping things simple shouldn’t hamper the experience of writing posts. Whenever I attempt to write a long post with this interface, I instantly look for other options. Sure, I don’t switch. But I would love to avoid having this feeling.

Saving and building on a draft is unnecessarily complicated. Keyboard shortcuts do not work consistently – undo/redo often messes up the post. This is exasperated by the already small editor window. In addition, the experience is not consistent between writing a new post and editing a draft.

This isn’t the first time I have complained about the writing interface. I wrote this almost a year ago (and that wasn’t the first either).

The editing experience remains poor for long-form posts – both from a desktop and a mobile device. It’s a great system with a promising base, but still has a long way to go before I can use it for the longer form content.

Neither am I the only one with the request. The editor is the most essential part of any blogging system. I hope Manton gets time to work on fixing it, an ask that’s pending for too long now. Without this, the platform isn’t fit for the blogging needs of full-length posts.

Here’s a word cloud of my posts that I created in 2008 – I had been blogging for around 2 years then. I find it funny that even then I was writing the most about “blog”. Apparently, meta-commentary never goes out of fashion.

As far as time wastage goes, short video services are the new social media. YouTube Shorts, Reels whatever. I have realized this mindless format of the content is eating up too much of my productive time. YouTube, in itself, was bad. But at least there was a chance that I would learn something. With Shorts, it’s a total waste of hours, a minute at a time.

I don’t watch Reels because, well, I don’t use Instagram. Or Tiktok. Or whatever app that’s trending now. But I keep going back to YouTube often when I have short time to pass. I hate that the app is aggressively pushing the Shorts nowadays.

What’s worse is that the videos are trash. They are neither fun nor informative. They register only as much as a dented luxury car would – I go “huh, that’s odd” and move on.

We have unnecessarily complicated the rating system for everything. It can simply be 👍🏽 or 👎🏽. A long rant awaits…

For my blogging/writing setup, I am done thinking long term. It affects how I post, acts as a hindrance to think freely. I trust my current setup with Micro.blog enough to take the plunge 🤞🏽

I don’t write a newsletter well. I don’t understand this medium. I have tried it a few times now. The first time, I published it as a links log, sharing links that I found useful. Then I made it personal, a letter about what’s up with me. It could well have been a blog post, every time. A weekly digest of my posts was a good tradeoff between a mindless link log and why-can’t-this-be-blog-post thought. But it felt meaningless.

To be frank, I don’t want to sign up for the added dance around subscribers and their numbers. I like it when I don’t know anything about who reads what I write. Also, I enjoy it when I am not forced to stick to a schedule of any sort. There are periods when I am highly active, writing, and sharing regularly. But then there are times when I don’t.

Newsletter wants to force a schedule onto me. Without a schedule, a newsletter is just another outlet for my blog posts.

I am an instinctive writer, my writing does not have any structure. Or nature. I write about anything and everything that interests me now. Because I read anything and everything that interests me now. My blog serves me best for the form of writing I do. Newsletters work for many — I enjoy reading them. But the form is not a natural fit for me.

So, I am done with my newsletters experiment. Every issue I have published is available on my blog as an essay. I intend on keeping it this way. RSS feed continues to exist.

I use Firefox on Windows/iOS/Android and Safari on Mac. But the comparison that Brave publishes is effective. Browsers are sticky, there’s rarely an incentive to switch.

Now that I have used the Micro.blog timelines with filters (hide replies and long-form posts only) on Gluon, I can’t wait to get the same on the web. I know there doesn’t exist one, neither have I heard of a plan. I could add it to Micro.threads, just for myself, if nothing else. With the posts already filtered for the thread discovery to work, I just need to wrap it in a view. Or I could even start afresh and build a timeline only view. Hmm.

Writing publicly, with the voice of your readers chirping at the back of your mind, is ineffective. You write for interaction – that’s futile. Most social media posts belong to this category. You are reined back by the voice — you write for someone else. The response you expect from them, your readers, provides you the lead. You write not what you like, you write what you think your reader likes.

Sure, this approach can churn some of the most well-received works of creation. It’s the satisfaction within the writer, the creator, that gets crushed in the process.