Following up on a brief Twitter conversation, it’s quite obvious that Pyslent has entered a serious lull, for many reasons. What I miss about the activity is that it was a nice way for me to document my activity & keep my friends up to date, both here & my personal blog. I’d like to get that back. Twitter is fine, but it’s all too short– quick things are fine, but it’s obviously hard to be too descriptive in 140 characters or less. Quite clearly real life business makes it harder to construct detailed posts, while at the same time updates about the growing Pyslent family may not be appropriate to share on a public website. Especially as Brandon, Lucas (and soon their others) along with their classmates find their way onto the web and inevitably will discuss the treasure trove of of stories at our humble blog.
Speaking for myself, I’ve become less public online at the same time I’ve become much busier. Part of that is the time to post, another part is the realization that sharing all my activities online doesn’t make as much sense as it once did, and possibly the biggest part is the friction inherent in that decision making progress. In the past trips to Vegas, San Francisco, Utah & Chicago would have been accompanied by many photos, one or more posts and a short narrative. Now my photography has become less prolific, my posting more guarded and the time to put together the prose.
Inevitably, the discussions have been reduced to pop culture, new gadgets and occasional news. But without the real social glue bringing us back– stories about ourselves & each other– the draw to post & interact has lessened. At least it has for me. And as with all communities, as the engagement drops, so does the compulsion to deepen our commitment to this community, even as our friendships remain solid offline, across the country and across the street.
My thinking is, if we move to password protect the site (providing the key to any of our friends that may enjoy our ramblings & experiences), we may be more inclined to post more personal stuff, or at least semi personal, along the same vein of our Tweeting except with more words to spare. It would provide a jolt, at a minimum, for me. Not sure I can speak for anyone else. What do you think?