Excursions

There are two writers within me. One wants me to write as freely and as frequently as possible, blurting out everything that comes to my mind. The other wants me to weigh each word, think deeply, and post only when I have something meaningful to say. Every time they fight, which they do often, my writing stops. I am going through one such phase.

I have enjoyed writing at Scribbles recently – you can follow these posts through the RSS feed. The simplicity of the posting workflow has me hooked. The biggest draw for me is that I can easily begin a draft and expand it with more thoughts across multiple sittings. It’s a lot more frictionless than what I have found anywhere recently. The interface suits the kind of posts I am inclined to write these days - blogging regularly about life and writing.

I am sure the platform won’t work for all. There’s no support for theming. No automatic cross-posting. No markdown. Micro posts don’t sit well on the platform, either. For all that, there’s no better platform than Micro.blog. Scribbles, on the other hand, strips the blogging to the bare. To what matters: writing blog posts. And for that, the platform does enough.

So, keep an eye on Scribbles. It will launch soon to be available for sign-ups.

Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with.

– Jerry Seinfeld

What a brilliant quote. And timely for me.

One thing I did well in my early Twitter days was contributing to and being part of an active #writer community. I found a few feeds at Bluesky that inspire me again.

Ages. After ages, I stayed awake late into the night. And still woke up early. Sure, the sleep cycle is screwed again.

I started watching Succession again. Nope. I am watching it for the first time. I could never get into the series earlier. No reason. This time I hope I do.

Just a few conversations in, and I am already seeing some newer ideas on BlueSky. Like feeds “responding” to me!? Hmm! May be I should spend time knowing this platform better. 🤔

Exactly a month ago, I decided to stop syndicating my posts to any social networks. What have I learnt in this month?

The interactions on my posts have significantly gone down. Every post had some replies earlier. No surprise, most were on Micro.blog. A few were on Mastodon. Both have naturally gone down to zero. I have received a few emails (and fewer comments through Commento). I responded to each of them, which is something I cannot say about the earlier replies I received on the timelines. My genuine lack of interest in checking my mentions and responding to them was why I had stopped syndication.

How about traffic (yuck!)? I have no clue. Though I have analytics enabled with Tinylytics, I don’t follow the numbers. I don’t know what the numbers were earlier and how they have been impacted. There is also a possibility that most follow my blog through RSS. Whatever the case, I don’t know, and I don’t have any interest in finding out.

The most noticeable impact has been on my writing – I have stopped writing for a timeline.

Earlier, I subconsciously filtered all my posts through the lens of how they would look on a timeline. Or to the folks who tend to reply to my posts frequently. Is this too long? Too short? Does this interest all? Or some? Or anyone at all? My mind was always crowded with such unnecessary doubts. I observed this behaviour first a couple of years ago.

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.

I even mentioned people through their social media handles in my posts. Futile, I agree. But the whole experience felt unnecessarily limiting, and I lacked the control to not let it feel.

What does all of this mean for my no-syndication experiment? As of now, nothing has changed. I like this unshackled feeling while I write. As if no one’s watching and weighing up my every word.

How about taking my writing to the readers? I am yet to find an organic way to do that. Automatic and passive syndication is not that.

I don’t see even a single person replying to posts on Bluesky. Is this a sign of a healthy network? I am not talking about my posts either—even posts from well-known voices garner no responses. Everyone seems to be just syndicating their other posts here.

When you say a device is the best smartphone, you must be clear if it is Android or iPhone. We are way past when we can compare devices across platforms. One decides on the platform first and then chooses the smartphone they want.

If I don’t like iOS, doesn’t matter how good the iPhone is.