5typos.net
On Sharing Yourself
It’s early. Too early for my taste, but that may be the adrenaline talking. Around us darkness is loosing ground quickly to daylight, and the scenery plays games with the imagination. I blame the bumpy road for not able to fall asleep, but I know better. I want this to be over, but also for it to never end.
Every few minutes someone gasps momentarily as if they’re about to say something and then stay silent. You guess their imagination is also playing tricks on them. We are all anxious to see it first.
Can you hear me?
I’m about to embark on a pretty cool trip. Two continents and at least 4 countries —not counting a special administrative region— that my passport has never known. To top it all off, I’ll be meeting up with some really great friends for most of it.
Being the self-absorbed egomaniac that I am, I wish to share this: with my family, some friends and any cyber acquaintance that may care. But I just can’t figure out how.
Push or Pull?
The opening paragraph is my dreamy narrative about some adventure on this trip. Most likely it’s just a pretty dramatic reimagination of a safari ride (which I’m definitely doing btw).
But how to share something like this?
Push:
For my family and friends I’m thinking email. My parents, I’ll just email directly. But for some close friends, a mailing list.
Why? Because it’s more personal. Something arrives in your inbox, you don’t need to look it up, and it has your name on it.
It also helps me write. I can picture friends reading either on their Gmail or Blackberry. It gives the abstract reader a face and some context. At least inside my head.
Hopefully it shouldn’t be too annoying or spammy since people will have to subscribe. Which makes an acceptable sort of push in my book.
Pull:
Then there’s the blog. From what I gather, out of the 50 or so uniques that visit this blog each week, half are people I know. Actually, I’m pretty sure that half of those are people I’ll get to see on this trip.
But what about the internet? the network of networks? The idea that you can share something that adds value and justifies the amazing revolutionary invention of the hyperlink is real. The long tail concept, although battered, does live on.
As a geek, I believe that sharing with the Google indexed void is my right and duty. A comment about an outstanding hostel, or the stupid tour I shouldn’t have taken, or even how not to ask for a beer; If just one person is influenced by it, then the value of the experience grows by 100%.
Great then, the blog gets a remixed version of the mailing list. But, which blog? That, I don’t know yet.
I’m creating a mailing list just for the trip, why not then a tumblr blog? It can have better theme for photos and even a cute whereistico.com domain. Maybe.
On the other hand, I already have personal blog that never gets updated — which is the biggest nono on the internet.
In any case, I still have a few days to figure this one out. Do let me know on twitter or email what you think.
Winter is coming:
It’s worth noting that in all scenarios things do not look too good for this blog: either a long spell of silence, or maybe even worse, I’ll soon bore you to death.
As Samuel Johnson wrote:
It may, I think, be justly observed, that few books disappoint their readers more than the narrations of travelers.
So I hereby apologize beforehand for disappointing you in the near future.
To those I don’t know, thanks for bearing with me, to the rest, this ain’t over.
Note: Found this while organizing some folders on 2016-03-01. Posting with backdate for context.