This is not an apology

I was going to write the sort of I’m-sorry-I-haven’t-blogged-for-a-while post when it hit my mind that this apology should never really take place. Blame it on the judeo-christian background. Bloggers…(I’m not a blogger, I’m someone who blogs but I don’t make money out of this activity nor I am a pro blogger)….bloggers often times publish posts in which they apologize and justify their absence on this medium. Now, please, don’t take offense for I know it’s not my/your case, because I write for that unknown you (well I write to organize my thoughts and resources but with the hope that someone else likes them and/or finds them useful…or quite likely, dull), but if we are to apologize then it’s because we did something wrong. And what’s wrong? Oh, well, according to all those SEO experts and pundits you need to blog frequently (ideally several posts a week, non-stop) to get a better PR, to get linked, to have more readers, to keep readers from unsubscribing, etc. You see, if I accept all that (and I must admit I did for a long time), if I play that game I am not longer enjoying the experience of blogging. Quite on the contrary, it becomes a burden and eventually part of the backlog. You see, after all the Edublog Awards stuff I thought over closing down the blog for good. It wasn’t really because I didn’t have resources and assorted rants to share with you but because this blogging activity is pretty time-consuming, at least for me. As you know, I’m not prone to blogging just a list of links, or posts about my daily diatribes (I may have and I will keep on doing that, but they’re in the end related somewhat to learning, social web, etc.), I don’t blog my own work (I mean, I’m not a cook who just blogs his/her own recipes, or a journalist blogging his/her own interviews) so it takes some time to create a post (from the most to the least trifling), it means reading and engaging somewhere else, it means collecting resources and it means writing in a language which, as you probably have already noticed, isn’t my mother tongue (i.e. I have to be more careful since we all know that an error in your first language means “oh, she made a typo or typed/thought too fast” while making an error in a second language means “she’s just useless, illiterate and basically a moron”). If I have to write frequently, if I can’t be away from the blog for 3/4 weeks -or the time it takes me to find the time to blog- in order to avoid readers/subscribers’ loss, what kind of readers would those be? I’m subscribed to loads of blogs, some of them have (0) feeds for a while some others are inhumanly prolific…and my choice for (un)subscription doesn’t depend on inactivity (unless a blog hasn’t been updated since 2005, then I might get the hint). And I know it’s not your case either. Plus, if I have to write frequently (and therefore overlook other daily tasks and current obligations) just to be in the spotlight (which spotlight anyway), I’ve just become a slave to a delusional vanity.

So paraphrasing and freely remixing that beautiful song by Queen: I want to break free, I want to break free from that self-satisfied and demanding interpretation of what social media is or could be. And I know that life still goes on, and I can’t get used to living without, living without you by my side, I don’t want to live alone and hey, God knows got to make it on my own. So I hope you can see I needed this post to break free and start anew. And I encourage you to do the same, break free from social web psychic burden as its side-effect, and let it flow (but no one said it will/would be easy).

All these thoughts are on my mind in a time when I’m struggling to come to terms with a more coherent relation with social media. Because as you know, there’s a life out there too and as I said, social web and social media is probably the most time-consuming ‘thing’ I’ve ever met. And when it becomes a sort of burden, then it’s when you have to stop and figure some things out. If you start to daydream about those good ol’ days when you had time  for everything (or your brain is likely fooling you into thinking you did when you actually didn’t), it might be a sign that something isn’t really working.

Or is it but in a different way? (as a Twitter contact pointed out).

ACHTUNG! DANGER!:

(Via Humanismo y Conectividad)

Like you, I have tons of things to do (first and foremost surviving in a hostile and numb environment) and  then I have some accounts on social media apps such as Twitter, Flickr, Twine, Wordpress and hundreds of swamped feeds to be read. And I think it’s time to select and set priorities. That’s why I quitted Facebook a year ago, because a) I don’t like their Terms of Service at all (wittier posts on the issue here and here) and b) it’s a waste of time, I wasn’t interested in hugs, beers, nudges…plus I noticed the amount of those nags increased exponentially if I put this or that picture (yeah, pathetic, pitiful)…Twitter, that app I had turned down so many times, has enabled many food-for-thought exchanges. I still don’t know whether social web is really a conversation or just a vent to our monologist skills, but I find Twitter the closest experience to what conversation could be in social media. This is my network of Twitter followed followers (I don’t know if you’re following me here…easy joke) and, generally speaking, I think the time spent there is worthy because I have gotten many ideas and exchanged different points of view I would have never experienced in my current face to face environment (you should come and see it, you’d understand a lot more).

My Twitter Friends Feb 09

But according to that “priorities, first”, let me share my guidelines to follow someone, or accept/decline connections in the social web realm:

1. The identity must be clear: I prefer if there’s a picture in which I can see your face and a link to a blog or something in which I can see a) you’re real; b) read your interests and see if they match mine (beware! I haven’t said we have to agree, but what I mean here is that we share topics of interest, not perspectives and believe me, I’m interested in many things about life). If you don’t have a picture or your gravatar is a “creative” one, I’d need a link to a blog or something. If your blog is about your product and your twitter is just for merchandising and branding, sorry but I won’t follow you, and I even might block you.
2. You must follow netiquette rules: I learned this the hard way, but I don’t like trolls at all. Yeah, I might be an online contact , that’s an inch, but don’t take a yard (if I haven’t given any). No insults, no uncalled for personal judgements, etc. One thing is conversation (and participation, democracy, etc.) and quite another abuse, you name it.
3. What do you think? Do we really know what we’re talking to? So why don’t we apply the same standards?

That having been said, I want to make this clear, I like many aspects of social web -just like I hope you do, too-:

Yep, I have met quite a few amazing people through this blog and the readers who take the leap and enter the conversation, also through Twine and Twitter, etc; I found interesting projects to work on and opened my eyes to what’s really going on out there (although, ignorance is -and was- bliss) and entered that flow and it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed. Thank you.

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I’m sorry but this is not an apology.

Do we/you really have to apologize? Am I being rude?