write.as/jonbeckett

It's pretty miraculous that I have managed to hang on to the majority of my blog posts. I've switched from Blogger to Wordpress, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Posterous, Posthaven, and Ghost repeatedly over the last few years. I've probably shaken off anybody who ever tried to follow me – I've probably driven them to distraction.

I need to stop switching, stay in one place, and just write. I need to tell the story of my day, and not worry about how interesting, or relevant it might be. I need to continually remind myself that it's not about readers, or commenters, or traffic, or anything else.

I also need to make time to read the people I used to read. To ask after them. To keep in touch.

I need to do lots of things.

While sick over the last few weeks I became painfully aware of what it's like to be forgotten. Of the huge circle of disparate friends I have made online, only two people have asked after me. For a few days I thought “f*ck everybody”, and belligerently ignored everybody – I figured that for many people the “it's all about me” mantra is all consuming. They probably have no idea how self interested their world is – they certainly won't notice my absence.

I've written about it before – “the social internet isn't social”. There's probably a blog post a couple of years ago describing exactly the same self-interested little world that seems to exist within the vast online social pissing competition. I can't even be bothered to find it.

This blog post sounds like a huge downer, but really it isn't – it's more a confrontation of the truth – that nobody is really that interested in each other. Sure, a few of us are, and those few are the friends we make and hang on to. The trick is realising who those few are, and not forgetting them when surrounded by attention seeking pissing competition practitioners. Maybe I'm too cynical about it all.

I haven't written openly like this for ages. It feels good.