crows to burnaby

Obviously I haven't been blogging much lately. You can see in the archives that I've dwindled from 10-15 posts/month down to about 4. I've been giving this some thought, and trying to figure out why.

The first thing I reach for as an excuse is time. I'm pretty much pouring myself into my new life these days, and when I'm not booking and promoting ARCTIC, practicing, working at that artist management company, or going to shows, I'm working on some web projects to make up the rest of my time. In the next month, I need to submit three grant applications and figure out how to get P2 visas for the two guys in the band. But really, am I so busy that I couldn't whip together some interesting blog posts if I wanted to? I don't think so. I occasionally spend twenty minutes or so playing Chain Factor (god, it's addictive, don't even try it) and if I invested that into a little writing, I could come up with something to post, no problem.

Next excuse? A sort of reticence. I'm a little hesitant to talk in any detail about some of the things I'm working on now. If they come to fruition, great, but if they don't, I don't really feel like advertising it. Also, I can't talk about most of my work with the management company, and don't think I should. And the private sides of my life, I just haven't felt like sharing with everybody en masse. I just don't seem to have the same drive to explain myself to the entire net the way that I did a few years ago.

But my main excuse - well, it's going to look like I'm picking a scapegoat. The blogging environment has changed, and the biggest change for me has been the growth of Facebook. I used to blog partly because it was a way for me to tell some of my friends and family what I was up to, a place to share things I was pondering and little random observations. Now I can do it much more easily and succinctly in a Facebook status or shared link. I know my audience, and I know I'm not talking to anyone I don't know or don't want to know. I still seem to give people the same entertainment value sometimes with one line of text than I do in a whole post here. It's more immediate, it's very comfortable, and it makes me feel like I'm staying in touch more easily with people with less effort.

Ironically, my first wall post on Facebook says "Don't expect this account to get the same maintenance that my blog, myspace, and Flickr accounts get..."

But I've never been that good at predicting trends.

Naturally there's negatives. Facebook doesn't give me a very detailed record of my life the way this blog does (ultimately, does that really matter?). And it doesn't have the same potential for serendipitous interactions with new people, the way this blog does - I find when I add people I don't have much of a connection with, it dilutes my newsfeed with chatterings about things I don't know or care about (and usually a ridiculous number of application requests, for some reason).

And of course not everyone is on Facebook yet, nor will be nor even should be. It does make me uncomfortable that it's a large corporate entity out of my control. I don't post anything terribly private there - after all, I have work colleagues and vague acquaintances among my friends - but there is more of a dark side to it than a simple blog on my own server.

What I haven't figured out is what I want to do about it. I like having a blog, and a soapbox on which to stand when I need to. I just don't need it right now. Will I feel like blogging again six months from now? I didn't six months ago. If I leave my blog that long, I'll lose whatever little traffic I still have left.

I've had other sites, pre-blogging days, that I gradually let rust over time. I didn't think that would happen here. Maybe crows to burnaby represents the version of me from six years ago, when I first came to Vancouver, before I changed my direction in life, and that's why I don't feel a strong connection to it any more?

Observations are welcome - both here and on Facebook.