CQ

It is July.  At least once in the past (I'd have to look back) I've taken July and tried to do 31 posts in 31 days.  I think I'm going to give it a shot again.

On a few occasions I've talked about what happened to posting here and why it dropped off so steeply... ok pretty much completely.  The easy culprit is Facebook.  Back in the day I would post or talk about an article I'd seen someplace, maybe from StumbleUpon or something.  Now with the ubiquitous "share" buttons it is so much easier to just do that sort of thing on Zuckerbook that bringing that content here just seems like a waste of time.  FWIW I probably have more of an audience over there than I ever did over here even if it is more contained.

I guess my relationship with the internet has changed a lot too.  Feedly (after Google Reader) and consumption through RSS instead of bookmarks has really opened up the fire hose of content.  Where I used to see a couple of dozens of posts per day I now literally have a que of hundreds, sometimes thousands.  When there's always something else to look at the writing seems to drop off.  Also, those dozens of posts I used to follow were mostly personal blogs and now that type of content is likely less than 1% of the total traffic across my screen - probably for many of the same reasons my own contributions dropped off.  I miss those posts.  If you are someone that is still writing: thanks, and keep it up.

Part of the issue has been the nature of the biggest stories in my life.  There's stuff you share online and stuff you don't - or at least where there's popular wisdom that says you shouldn't.  I had a kid.  I rarely put photos of him online and from a privacy standpoint it seems like you're not supposed to blog about your children in a meaningful way.  There's certainly been a lot to say, but it doesn't seem to be appropriate to say it here.  That's a shame I guess because I think it might be fun for him to be able to look back and see what I was thinking about him when he is older.  I'll have to give that some thought.  The other big piece of news has been health related.  I've been through a multi-year process trying to stay healthy and that's another subject that seems wrong for open public consumption.  I did write about a bunch of those things, but instead of going here or on that blue page all of that writing went out via email to a fairly discreet d-list.  I have an archive.  I've thought a little about turning it into a book.  So I guess if it would be ok for publication it would be ok to put here.  Another thing to percolate on.

There's something else too.  I feel like I have really been changed by a general chilling effect within public discourse.  I just don't want to set anyone off.  I recognize this in at least two separate spheres.  The first one is obviously politics.  Things have become so energized and polarized that any comment can have you off to the races, and in an open forum with the chance that something will go viral or attract the attention of trolls it just seems simpler to stay silent.  I've noted often over the last year that I post and delete more than I post and leave on social media.  Those potential abrasions are probably the reason for that.  The other venue that has cooled is work, mostly among the students.  It is my observation that trigger thresholds are far lower now than when I used to write about what was happening at work often.  I've also seen very real consequences for faculty who had thought they were innocently (or perhaps snarkily) posting in their own outlets only to get jammed up for something they said.  It doesn't seem worth getting ostracized in the media or into deep water with my boss just to complain that "kids today" can't find a paper clip or read a syllabus.  That's too bad, but it is very much the world we live in, that I live in.

So there's that.

Still, it seems like there should be a way to say something meaningful about something without tipping into "there be monsters."  Let's see if I can manage it for a month.