What are you doing on this page? Or what am I doing on this page?
Ok, so both are probably valid questions at the moment. Many of you probably just clicked through from links on my previous pages and are slightly confused.
Here’s what I’m up to.
Actually, first, here’s what I was formerly up to.
Up to this point I have had what seemed like 8 billion pages going, each serving its own little fragment of my life.
It started with one website for people who know me in real life, and one blog for people who know me from online. Then myspace got involved on the rl side, and xanga for the online side, and the new page focused just on my daughter that had people from both sides.
But then there were also the pages specifically for creative stuff, one for written and one for visual. Then there was the book discussion circle blog on yet another site.
Then as the general blog grew into a different sort of reader, I ended up splitting off into a second blog more focused on deeper thoughts and religious discussion, leaving the original more focused on everyday life and occasional ranting and venting.
Then there was my private blog basically formed for saving quotes from things and devotionals and such in a format where I could search them to pull a specific one back up easily. And while not exactly a blog, an offline but yet computerized journal on commentary on verses that struck me during reading.
Confused yet? You should be!
This to me made sense as each of these developed on its own. And, really, would something I’ve written trying to provoke deeper discussion on a random religious topic lose its impact a bit if it happens to be right after my random ranting about the people at working seeming to be clueless as to how a parking lot is supposed to work? And followed by a random fictional writing entry involving a cheesy kidnapping plot? (Is it cheesy or cheesey? Neither looks right.)
And yet, as much sense as it made to segment things, I’m finding that the more things are segmented, the more its beginning to bother me. Because, it many ways, it segments my social circles as well, and while I often have done cross-posts, I find that at many times it has also segmented my writing and by extension even my thinking into nice neat little boxes corresponding to each page.
And I don’t like it.
So I’m not going to do it.
I’ve gone round and round about this for several months, but I have decided that it’s what I want, or maybe need, to do right now. So, while I’m not deleting other pages just yet, I will not be updating them either beyond the link that sent you here.
I’m still not particularly convinced that the mishmash of topics won’t harm the effect each individual type would have had on its own, however, I feel like a more combined impression of my life in general is the greater value.
However, I will mention that a few of the sites will not be combined. Myspace will be used for communication, though not particularly for blogging anymore, and will remain mostly real life connections. I plan to re-do my daughter’s page (again) soon, but to move it to another site. And content related to one particularly drama prone website will remain seperated from just about everything! Actually, maybe quarantined is a more precise word than seperated…
So, welcome to the chaotically-topical mishmash I’m calling my web home now.
Why here?
As mentioned, I’ve been on several sites previously, including my original blog running since 1999 with several years of content currently publicly archived.
As the years have passed, I’ve stayed with that blog site, even as newer and much better sites have been built, mostly as a sentimental choice with a touch of resistance to change tossed in. In the past year though, the site has been having more and more technical issues that I can’t ignore any more.
Blogger’s interface is nice, however, it has constantly fought with me. Particularly when I used various off-site tools to write updates. Come on, I had more than 50 posts over a year and a half and it suddenly decides to mark me as a spam blog every time I made more than one post in a day? How many spam blogs have that long of a history, or that many spread out posts? Granted, they have the human verification appeal, but it’s still greatly annoying to have to deal with, especially repeatedly.
Livejournal was the opposite. Worked smoothly, but the interface drove me nuts.
Xanga has too much mess, and I don’t like the restrictions.
So I decided to come to wordpress. As you can see, I’ve been messing around here for quite a while considering the site, and thus far I haven’t run into problems of a critical nature. It allows open comments. It has offsite update tools, including dashboard widgets. It has options for the sidebar, and static pages outside of the date-based organization system. It has built in options to sort by tag, and a comments feed that shows comments from all entries listed by date rather than having to check each entry. It auto-saves drafts as you write. And it has on-site photo and video storage, as well as for documents and pdf. I’m rather liking it thus far!
So that’s why you are here. Long winded enough answer?
