I Got Quiet

You may (or may not) have noticed that I went all radio-silent around here for the better part of two weeks. Actually, looking at it, it was exactly two weeks.

Depending on how you look at the site, it might be less obvious why. I’ll give a quick explanation.

I started my blog as a(nother) photoblog. I decided on tumblr because it’s super easy to get moving quickly, and that was my objective. In the past few months, though, I’ve realized that while my blog languised, I was looking forward to – even excited about – updating the tumblr blog. And about seeing what others had said and posted on tumblr.

I started thinking about why this was the case, and I realized that was the case. I’ve run the Vagary since 2005. I’ve invested a lot of time over there, even if it was mostly to learn. I loved MovableType and spent a lot of time, way back when, figuring out if MT or WordPress or some other CMS would be the best way to go. But I felt like I was writing into the void. I don’t really want comments, so my only method for measuring the appreciation of a post was Google Analytics, and let’s be honest, they’re pretty cold.

Additionally, I had to spend time and effort creating posts that could stand on their own. Because I didn’t blog frequently, I felt like any post on a topic had to stand on its own, with a little recap of all the important details of that topic. So I’d think “I should write about X!” and I’d start putting ideas down, but then I’d feel overwhelmed by the amount of backstory I’d have to include. And I’d abandon the post.

Tumblr was different. I felt like people were seeing – and enjoying – my stuff. That’s a key difference; there’s a low-friction feedback mechanism. It’s so easy to click the heart or reblog buttons. It’s easy to interact. It’s easy to reply. It’s easy to add value, and it’s easy to see that you’re adding value. And that’s what I want. To add to an ongoing conversation. Tumblr does that very well.

So, I’m moving things to tumblr. I spend the last two weeks figuring out how I wanted to do that, designing a custom theme (first time playing with Blueprint, by the way. I’m still figuring out some bugs in my design). I toyed with keeping the blog-blog and photo-blog as separate tumblr blogs, but decided against it. I do have separate RSS feeds, though, for Photos and Articles – in addition to the one that has everything – in case you’re only interested in those things. I’m looking for a way to bring over my most popular posts from the Vagary, but I can’t figure out a way that makes sense, yet. Regardless, I hope you enjoy.