The maintenance of an online presence is probably the closest I’ll ever get to keeping an actual garden. The planting, weeding, pest control, monitoring, watering, cross-pollinating, seasonality, harvest, soil pH balance, fertilizing… it’s all here, but in digital format so the toil is invisible!
The technical challenges seem to multiply, too. For example, I’ve had to switch templates on the website a couple of times recently to deal with the fickle nature of social media distribution. Then my mobile phone would no longer charge and I had to replace it, which affected the way I use Instagram because my new phone camera is TERRIBLE.
What to do now? Since I joined Instagram in 2012, I’ve been consistent with uploading only mobile pictures and videos, i.e., no DSLR images. My phone can’t keep up anymore (read: I’m unwilling to spend a lot of money on a phone), so now I’m using Instagram as a microblog and revisiting my archives. Chronology is out the window.
https://www.instagram.com/gailatlarge/
My website has been quieter these days because of the behind-the-scenes work and troubleshooting. Plus, photo editing takes time in addition to writing, which often involves research. With Instagram, I can tell one story about one picture, using photos that I’ve already edited. It achieves my goals in an abbreviated way. After writing on the internet for more than 17 years it’s become habitual. If I’m not writing something every day, somewhere, I get antsy.
This is a rare meta-type post, but what probably brought this on is the date: my blog turns 15 years old towards the end of this month. 15! Every time I reach the blog’s birthday month I think of how this all started, what I’ve chronicled, and what I’ve left out. It’s been said if you do something enough, you only get better at it… I don’t know if that’s true with blogging — I am by no means writing or editing faster than I did at the beginning — but I don’t feel like I’m running out of content at all. In fact, the opposite: I have far more content than I ever have time to properly publish.
Which brings me right back to the point of this post: I’ve converted my Instagram feed into a miniature version of my blog. You don’t even need to have a mobile phone or the app to see the feed, you can view it in any browser. Easy.
As always, thanks for stopping by!
