Maybe it’s the suit that comes out only for weddings and funerals; this is the one you keep for best. Then there is the old battered t-shirt you wear everyday that you don’t mind just how scrappy it gets. They’re both clothing items but why does one get the status of “for best” and the other “I don’t mind if I destroy it’. I felt this tension when thinking about content. Essays seem so formal, and they require effort, research and editing. Posts feel more natural to be me but where’s the line between an opinion and a how to? What about updates, maybe those should live in blogs?
Currently I don’t use “social media”. I plan on setting up a GoToSocial instance so I have an entry point into the fediverse but I don’t plan on gluing myself to conversations. I never was a big user of twitter1 and I don’t really enjoy online discussion. I’m too high in conscientiousness2 and even the most neutral of online exchanges can leave me reeling in overthink. But I do want to develop some mental resilience to it, so I’m going with a fediverse account. Even if it means I’m talking into a void, I don’t care.
In the end I came round to the idea that this site has “posts” because then, there’s no formal requirement or standard to meet before content can labelled as fit for one purpose. That’s good because it’s been so long since I’ve wrote on a good cadence that I need to just “drain the pipes” and let the built up stuff come out. Stuff like this.
And on the subject of clothes that you “save for best”.
Just wear them when you feel like it.
That’s what they’re for.