Thoughts

The Place of Etherlimits

July 13, 2012 /

Ever since my impromptu post the other night, I have been considering how I want Etherlimits to fit into my constellation of social media. I have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

I have been working at consistently reading the information that flows to me from these outlets. Although I do post to each of them on occasion, especially while I am traveling, I have never felt that I am very good at distilling my thoughts down to 140 characters. I am not sure I have anything to say that would be that interesting to others… so why do I hang onto Etherlimits? If I don’t have enough to fill up 140 characters, what vanity makes me feel that people would want to read paragraphs of information?

Well, I am Episcopalian, and, as such, I tend to like tradition. Don’t worry, I have detected the irony in the idea that my BLOG is somehow a “tradition”. Joey started Etherlimits just after he graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 2003. Joey created Etherlimits as a place for us to post and archive pictures from our newly acquired digital camera – before Flickr (2004) or Instagram (2010) were an option. Although blogs were certainly a ‘thing’ by 2003, not that many of our friends or family had blogs. I think that Kathlyne was the only person we knew who had a blog back in the early 2000s.

Etherlimits is nine years old, and in the computer age, that is ancient. I feel pretty good about its longevity. Neil Gaiman’s blog turned ten last year… He got the jump on us by a couple of years, but he is Neil Gaiman, so I am cool with that.

Our posts to Etherlimits in the first couple of years were mostly pictures and stories of our travels. We were both traveling frequently for work at that time. Our families could keep up with us by looking at Etherlimits.

By 2007 it seemed like all our friends were writing blogs! In late 2007, Joey and I got Flickr accounts, and began posting most of our pictures there, which made Etherlimits a bit redundant. I began experimenting with using Etherlimits less for just photos and more as a blog. I posted semi-regularly through mid-2011. Then the insanity of the CTMS Renewal struck home, and I disappeared from my life for almost a year! I feel like I have been in a daze for ages. I cannot remember large parts of the end of 2011. I am usually the person in my family that remembers all the events, dates, who was there, etc. Right now Joey is reminding me of events that took place since June of 2011. This is unprecedented in our marriage.

So what conclusions have I come to with all of this rambling? I do know that I want to keep Etherlimits (it seems ill-advised to throw away something that has been serving me well for nearly a decade). I do NOT want to post pictures on both Flickr AND Etherlimits. My current decision is to post to Etherlimits and link to photos and sets of photos on Flickr.  I reserve the right to change my mind later.

Maybe people will read what I write, and maybe not. If people don’t care about what I am writing, there is a big internet out there, and they can find something else to read.  I am going to try not worry about the fact that perhaps there is no need for me to write, and that maybe no one is interested.

As someone who loves history, and laments the decline of letter writing, I am championing my blog as historical record. As the last year has taught me, my brain will, on occasion, have difficulty holding onto the details of my life. Writing it down in the first place will probably help me remember, and if I totally forget, I can come back and read my own crazy writing, and be reminded that I am surrounded by family and friends who love me. Perhaps some anthropologist will find this blog and somehow figure out how to interpret the data. Who knows, Etherlimits might be in a museum some day.  We all have dreams.


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