Blogging – Remember to Celebrate the Little Things
Posted on August 18, 2023 by Aywren
I’m going to make a promise to myself that I will start celebrating the little things in my blog again.
What do I mean by this?
As I’ve gone back to recode all the posts in this blog, I’ve seen a shift in the kind of things I’ve posted over the years. Back in 2014-2017, I’d often write posts about the little things that happened that sparked joy in my games.
Sometimes I was gifted a minion. Sometimes I earned a piece of gear or a mount. Sometimes I finished leveling a job. Sometimes I talked about an event that was happening in game.
All the examples above are (typically) from FFXIV because that’s the game I’ve played the most and to the deepest extent over the past (almost) 10 years.
In the year 2016 alone, I wrote 108 posts about FFXIV. In contrast, this year, I’ve written… let’s see… only 14 posts, and over half the year is done.
So, what happened?
In short: social media.
Before mid-2018, my blog was my main social outlet for everything. While I had a Twitter account, I didn’t use it for very much. I never got into things like Pinterest, Instagram, etc. So, when anything semi exciting happened, I’d whip up a blog post about it, even if it was a short one.
However, in July of 2018, I launched my role playing blog on Tumblr, which has now become Spot of Mummery. This seemed innocent at the time, but I had no idea how much it would eat into my other blogging projects.
Because Tumblr is a blogging-social-media mashup, and I was becoming more focused on my RP alt, Amon, it became really easy to just toss quick micro posts up on Tumblr. It felt like blogging because… well, I’ll argue that Tumblr is a blog platform. However, this was building a habit of turning to social media to get my quick-fix of “likes” in exchange for my shorter content.
My blogging has dropped off significantly since 2018. Not just because I was enjoying my time on a different blog, though. I’d like to note that there is nothing wrong with shifting focus to a project I was enjoying more - and that’s not really the point I’m trying to make.
What I am saying is that I found myself turning to social media as a place to put these small celebration moments instead of blogging about them. For example:
Me in FFXIV: I got this cool thing! This made me happy! Yay!
Me: *Tweet/Toot/Whatever it to the world instead of making a blog post about it.*
And why not? It’s faster and easier just to toss a toot out when there’s something small you want to share. Why spend that time writing a whole blog post about it if it’s only something small? Again, there’s nothing wrong with doing that except…
Social media of any kind is fleeting.
While I won’t say that a blog post is eternal, it’s far easier to search for a blog post about a topic than to dive into a Mastodon account and try to find a specific toot you made last year.
In fact, there are many things I go back to my blog to reference from the past.
Like… what was that video card I installed a few years back? When did I last upgrade my computer? When I left (XYZ game), what were my thoughts and why was I frustrated with it? What were my thoughts on (this raid) or (this dungeon) back when it was still new?
Because I blogged about these things, I have records I can go back to and reference. This is not so true with posting to fleeting social media, which becomes almost impossible to search after a certain time has passed.
Since this has come to my attention, I’m going to try to do better going forward.
I think habitually celebrating the small things is a good mindset to have in any activity we do. While I will still post these things to social media, I’ll try to write a blog post about them first – and then post the blog post to social media. 😉