Lost and Found

After writing about my current feelings about social media, I saw that there was documentary on the subject, but I haven’t watched it yet. I doubt if it will change how I feel—maybe enhance how I feel?—but I’m interested to see if they make any of the points I was making. I’ll watch it someday. Last week or so, I had various technical difficulties—no internet, and such—which forced me to lay off any new entries on this website. The short time away made me look at things a little differently. I had to wonder to what extent I post things because I’m addicted to it. Not so different from social media, after all. Whenever you’re forced to take a break from an addiction, that’s often when you recognize it as an addiction.

So, that made me think. I don’t care for addictions—I’ve had too many, in the past, that were not making my life better. Recently, on this website I removed the “like” button, just because I felt like it was pointless. I also have no “comment” boxes, on purpose. I don’t much care for public comments. I mean, on my social media, it can be nice at times, in that I have so few followers, and the ones who do comment are relatives and friends, usually—so that’s okay. But the vast majority of comments on everything on the internet are garbage. If anyone reading anything on my website really wants to comment on anything, the email address is on the contact page, and a person is free to send me an email.

Anyway, after this forced, short, break I had from posting, I decided that feeling like I had to post something every day, or near that, was pointless. (Maybe in the future, regardless of how much I’m writing, or posting, I’ll just check-in on the News Page once or twice a week.) I’m not sure anyone is reading any of this, at all. It’s okay if no one is—it’s for me, more than anything—but still, it’s important to me to have this writing in a public place. I don’t need to know what people think about it, if they “like” it or not, or even if they are reading, or who is reading. I do suspect that I have one reader, someone out there (it’s you, after all, reading this, now!)—and one is enough. I am only one person, ultimately. I read a number of blogs and websites on the internet regularly, and I don’t feel the need to comment on them or otherwise let the author know that I’m reading their writing. But it’s pretty important to me, the stuff that I can read on the internet. It’s funny—we used to read it in newspapers, and magazines—and I still do, to some extent. I just read more on websites now, and I think that’s a good thing—in that I’m able to focus my reading toward my pretty esoteric interests. And the fact that I can potentially be part of that, here, if even for one reader, I feel like that’s okay.

—RR 9.25.20