Saturday, April 25, 2009

Why Blog, When You Can Microblog?

Strange days, indeed.

For some reason tonight, "Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These," by John Lennon keeps going through my head. Usually when I get a song stuck in my cranium, I find that there is more to it than it being just a meme (or "ear worm," as some call them). Maybe it's all about the economic doldrums we're in or maybe the way the political winds are blowing up in Sacramento and over in the Beltway.

I've been beyond remiss in updating my blogs over the last year. I can't blame it on anything other than just general busy-ness. Writing is both a joy and a curse, as anyone who pens for a living can tell you. I've said it many times before, but it's hard to turn off the idea machine when you're in the middle of a piece … and then you're torn between capturing everything that you've created before you lose it among the gray matter and continuing on your self-assigned schedule. I don't have ADD, at least I don't think I do, but if anything can whipsaw my attention span, it's a new creative thought.

So, instead of my weekly blog posts, I've been captivated in the last year with Twitter, the even-more-famous microblogging site and have been using Twitter to get my blog on, so to speak. I'm not a Twitter addict – I'm sure of that – but I find it more than a little convenient to tweet my musings in 140 character chunks as they come to me during the day. When I'm not telling the Twitterverse of my every little thought, I'm sharing video and other online links as well as playing DJ, courtesy of Blip.fm.

Social networking is clearly in its infancy and yet it has become a big part of my life and that of others. As I approach my fiftieth birthday, I remain amazed at the creativity and ingenuity of others and gratefully embrace the new technologies that are provided for our amusement.

Strange days, indeed?