The Kudzu Files

Please shut up: Why self-promotion as an author doesn’t work.

This is so true. Now, I’m neither an author nor a reviewer, so my thoughts here are really in foreign territory (unless I do manage to finish my latest project and it does something other that occupy bits on my laptop). But my blog will soon be 13 years old, and it sits in lonely isolation along with thousands of others like it. I miss blogging. I really do. Facebook is starting to feel like those places you went post-college that you one day realized just weren’t that much fun anymore. I tried Tumblr, and my reaction was like Dawson’s – I felt like an intruder, an old guy sitting in a college bar. Twitter consists of people burning up their creative energy trying to fit a 144-character limit.

So why keep this around? Because Facebook. Because Twitter. Because Tumblr. Because even if nobody ever sees this, it’s one place that I can control. It’s one place where I’m not inundated with “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!”. It’s like a potting shed where I can go plant ideas, or just putter the afternoon away. It’s mine.

Blogging made people think in terms longer than 144 characters, or spout platitudes in comments, or hoist endless straw men. The audiences were much smaller, of course. A Facebook post reaches far more people than my blog ever did, although with Facebook’s continual changes I feel like the number of Facebook readers is getting smaller. Facebook has also made me realize that some people I’ve known through the internet for many years are essentially brainless morons. No, I won’t name names. But while the Facebook audience is larger, it isn’t more satisfying. Maybe I keep The Kudzu Files around in case one day people just get tired of the inanity of FaceTumTwittergram and blogging comes back around. Or maybe it’s just easier to keep it than to decide not to.

I should do this more. It’s made me feel better just by doing it.