Kate of A Playful Day (AKA GreenTriangleGirl on Ravelry) has issued a "love your blog" challenge for the month of April. Every week she's going to post a prompt for us all to blog about, with the goal of making us fall back in love with our blogs. Or, for me, maybe the goal should be falling in love with my blog in the first place, since I'm afraid I've never really shown this blog much love.
Blogging in the abstract always sounds like a fantastic idea. Throughout the day I think of great topics to blog about, lots of things I want to say, pictures I want to post. But I rarely get around to actually blogging. I've committed to the Love Your Blog Challenge to try to change that.
The prompt for this week is Interactions and Community. I've been thinking about this for the last few days, trying to decide how I interact both on and off line. In real life I'm a bit of an introvert. That seems to translate to being a bit of a lurker online. I follow quite a few blogs and read quite a few Ravelry forums, but I don't comment a lot. I think part of that is my natural introvert tendencies, and part is my inner critic/perfectionist thinking no one would be interested in what I have to say. Outside of Ravelry, I've never really gotten into any social media, although I do have twitter and pinterest accounts.
In thinking about my real life interactions and community, I realized I enjoy socializing with a few people or attending small group events like knit night. I'm also comfortable speaking to large groups. But I loathe the in-between size, especially casual mixing with people I don't know well, like during meeting breaks or at parties. I feel awkward trying to join a conversation and have no idea what to say. I fail at small talk. And it seems a lot of social media are the online equivalent of small talk. I know on twitter I always feel like I've walked into the middle of a conversation and I have no idea how to join in without feeling like I've barged in.
So, any other introverts/lurkers out there? Silly question really, because if you're like me, you'll be reading but you won't comment. I'm going to challenge myself to comment more - mainly because I do enjoy getting comments. Presumably other people like getting comments too, so I'll start by picking one blog post each day to comment on. And I'm challenging myself to participate a little more in online communities, starting with this "Love Your Blog" Challenge. Wish me luck.
I'm new to blogging and have mostly been a lurker but now I'm trying to comment more, I fail terribly at small talk too! I also most sound like I'm copying you word for word, but it really is that similar:)
ReplyDeleteI'm the same! I read loads of blogs but haven't been commenting until this challenge. Now I too am trying to reach out! So good luck! :-)
ReplyDeleteGreatest of luck and of course you're not alone with you social media feelings!!
ReplyDeleteSocial media came be hard to navigate- I find it hard to put anything I want to say in 140 characters. One of my challenges as part of Love Your Blog was to comment more, I read a lot without often commenting. I enjoy reading comments on my blog, knowing someone has not only read my scribblings, they've taken something from it, I'm aiming to share some that with others
ReplyDeleteI often read blogs or forums without commenting, for much the same reasons as you. I really hope that I can break that habit and interact more.
ReplyDelete