Tumbling over brevity
The very first blog I published were not powered by a CMS. It was my own HTML and CSS, manually updated via the ftp and a text editor. Very crude, I know, but it worked. Thinking back at the time it took up update the blog, not to mention if I changed the designed, gives me the chills. I can’t remember how, but I came across WordPress in its infancy.
Instantly loved it! Easy to install, easy to use and easy to tweak.
Along came Twitter, 140 characters of brevity. But sometimes 140 characters doesn’t suffice. Unfortunately, just posting a blurb seems to unWordPressy. Tumblr seemed perfect for that. First WordPress, then Twitter and later on Tumblr. I was busy. Publishing stuff; left, right and centre — to use an old cliché.
At some point it kind of didn’t make sense. So I took a break from Tumblr, but then I took a break from Tumblr. Stopped using Tumblr — and later on stopped using Twitter. Focused only on WordPress.
Now I’m back on Twitter and flirting with Tumblr again.
This is a very rough timeline of my experience with WordPress, Twitter and Tumblr. But I’m intending to combine these three, again. However this time I will have a more focused purpose for each service and how I will use them.
WordPress
I will not change how I use .random[oid] that much. Some minor changes regarding content, which means less short blurbs, but I will stick to posting long articles — 300+ words.
Twitter
No much change there to be honest. The same random tweets, spruiking my writing.
Tumblr
This is a tricky one. First I thought about treating it as a place to publish all my articles/columns/etc which are not published elsewhere, but I still want published. Kind of like a online newspaper. Giving it some thought, I don’t have the time to attempt running an online newspaper — maybe later. And maybe WordPress is better for an online newspaper?
So I thought I could start another WordPress blog for my unpublished work (yup, I get sent to a lot of cool events, write about them, but the articles aren’t always published). But that would probably be a very empty blog, with not so much happening. And I just feel .random[oid] is too random and personal for that, kind of.
I don’t know…
What I know is that I love brevity and minimalism. Something Twitter, Tumblr and Shortmail provide me with when I access these services via web. You can of course use a minimalistic theme on WordPress, but it has a lot of bells & whistles, which are great, but maybe a bit too much.
Twitter, Tumblr and Shortmail are all great to get information spread instantly. While WordPress seems, to me, more like a quarterly magazine.
In Australia it is very common to refer to a journalist as a ‘journo’. So I thought about a title, Journo’s Journey. Which is how I might treat my new Tumblr account. Kind of like a travel-log of my life as a [gonzo] journo. What I experience, exclusively, as a journalist.
Not sure what to do with unpublished articles, yet, but I’ll figure something out, soon.
Just don’t hold your breath.
Gonzo!
