Brian Sawyer

What Am I Doing?

I’ve been trying (without much success, obviously) to blog more, but I’m beginning to think I’m just much better at keeping my posts to 140 characters or fewer. That is, when I say “better,” I mean only “more reliable,” because I’m not inhibited by the perceived barrier of wit, creativity, or importance when posting to my Twitter account as I am when I stare a blank WordPress window. I use Twitter frequently to say very little (in terms of significance, not just character count), while I reserve my blog to say something a little more significant, the opportunity for which ends up presenting itself much less frequently.

Of course, if you ever check up on my status, the fact that I prioritize quantity over quality in short bites will not be news to you. Here’s a cloud of words you’re likely to see more often than not (as reported by Twitter Grader):

I’m really surprised that neither “snow” nor “driveway” make an appearance in that tedious list, but otherwise, it looks like a fairly accurate representation of what I say when I choose to update my status (via Twitter, but also routed to Facebook and fed to the sidebar of my blog). I rarely talk about work (though the word “work” did uncharacteristically manage to find its way into an update today), my personal life (beyond notifying the world that my child is sick, of course), or much else of real importance, which I guess is a shame when you consider that this seems to have become the primary source of information about my life for some people who are very close to me (I’ll admit I’m not great with the phone or correspondence in general either).

But then, though I ostensibly strive for significance here on my blog, do I ever really reach that audacious goal anyway? (That was a rhetorical question, so please don’t try to answer it.) I certainly don’t ever get too deep into my personal life (the ultimate in significance, by most of the standards I’ve used to evaluate things lately) over here. Is it because my family would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them? Probably not. Originally, I was a little worried about trolls, stalkers, and such getting a glimpse into the lives of the people who are important to me, but that really doesn’t worry me so much anymore. So what keeps me from opening up, especially when it would appear that I have very little to say about the Important Issues in the World?

Honestly, I have no idea. In fact, I’ve lost the thread of what this post was supposed to be about in the first place. It began as yet another excuse for why I don’t blog here more often and a redirect to my Twitter stream, but with so little going on over there, somehow it ended up in a meaningless rumination on the purpose and significance of my online presence, such that it is. Like public navel gazing and realizing I don’t even have a bellybutton of which to speak.

So, the question I never give thought to above the Twitter input box really should inform everything that goes on this blog. Beyond that, it’s worth actually stopping to consider every once in awhile, between keystrokes stolen between rushed moments during any given day. What am I doing?