More, Smaller, Things

Reading Matt Gemmell’s Write Less reminded me of a feeling I have:

On social [media], content of any length at all is fine — and indeed the maximum allowed length is often very short, which reinforces the association. So, perniciously, our eager-to-simplify brains have decided that the converse is true for blogs: you can write only longer, weightier stuff.

I wrote something similar myself, way back in 2007:

Sometimes just getting a couple of paragraphs online would be better than writing nothing at all. Short howtos, “I spotted this useful thing” and peeks into other worlds.

Posting quick pointers to pages I’ve found interesting feels like it should happen elsewhere. But I don’t use my Twitter account. Nor do I have a Mastodon or Facebook account. And I have never downloaded TikTok.

It turns out that I don’t have an elsewhere.

Every so often I look back at what I wrote here ten or more years ago. Much of that stuff is short and off the cuff. It turns out that the shorter pieces and links tell me more about the kind of person I was back then than the longer pieces do.

Realising I value them has encouraged me to write shorter pieces. I shouldn’t feel guilty about posting links, tiny thoughts, photos and straying from computers. I don’t have anywhere else I write, and I don’t want to write anywhere else. Having twenty years of content in one place is a rare pleasure. So here it is, and we’ll see how it goes this year. Hopefully I’ll enjoy reading it in another ten years.