As I move forward with reimagining Tiny Twig Goes Out on a Limb, I am reimagining how I interact with people online. I long to be more of a giver than a consumer. However, my time in this season of life is limited. I have an obscene list of blogs in my RSS reader, some are favorites from when I started reading blogs while pregnant with Twig1 in 2006.
However, I find that I more or less just scroll through the list each day and take in the pretty pictures and mentally file away projects for "someday". Or, I land on a blog whose heart I love…and I simply gobble up the words and leave nary a clue that I was there. Both of these actions feel wrong to me.
Human connection is the heartbeat of blogs. The unique voice, the daily "coming again", the response–these are all what set blogs apart from print publication. I feel like I need to comsume less in order to engage more. I have long considered myself a digital hoarder of sorts. I stuff my computer with links and images and piled up bookmarks. My desktop is as cluttered as my mind…but, what if I miss something life-changing? What if I forget where to find it?
So, each day this week, I have cleared out 10 blogs from my reader and I have purposed to clean up my bookmarks and desktop before week's end. I need to streamline my "digital life"–so that I can be more engaged in both the Tiny Twig community and the online community at large. I have not purged any personal blogs–you know, the ones where there is original content and a real person behind the words. I am simply getting rid of those "eye candy" blogs where I scroll through with glassy and lusty eyes…wanting to consume and obtain more and more.