10,000 Monkeys and a Camera

It’s a very quiet weekend here at Chez 10K. I’ve got the house to myself and the weather is chilly and wet, so I’m staying in with the dog and trying to clear away some clutter (both on-and offline). I poked around on the blog a bit last night and realized that it’s worked its way into a huge mess over the years. It’s been through several software changes along the way, all of which have left some dead links and screwy formatting in their wake. I’ll be working on cleaning that up this fall. Also, the links down the right side column had become waaaaaay out of date, so I bulldozed most of them away (if I accidentally deleted your site, please let me know — it was not an operation that I conducted with all that much precision).

Staying on top of the blogging is getting to be quite the challenge these days. When I first started with this little project, there really was no social media to speak of (my blog and facebook were actually both founded in 2004). Now there are rss feeds and status updates and tweets and SMS and waves and… well, just wait and there will be something else tomorrow!

Keeping up with it all has been getting way too time-consuming. So, I’ve cut a lot out… or at the very least, I’ve been reworking the proportions — I’m not reading nearly as much about politics lately, but I am still following my favorite food bloggers, and I’ve added a bit of twitter and facebook to the mix, so I’ve had to cut back on reading blogs in general, and so on. And while I love reading the Internet, lately I’m trying to carve out more time for reading actual books. And, of course, this is all supposedly taking place just in my spare time. (Ha! ;-D)

I hope I can keep things going around here with some regularity, but I’m working on finding a new rhythm. I’ve been pretty inconsistent for a while — I don’t think the wind has really filled my sails since the election ended (I’m burned out on that stuff in so many ways), but I’m still playing around with what other subjects I might like to cover. I’m also trying to dope out what goes where* in this social networking world — which tidbits make good tweets, what is better suited for a status update, and when a thought should be fleshed out for a full-fledged post.

I’m still a long way from figuring out those last parts, and am eager to hear how everyone out there is coping with the demands the social networks make on our time. I love being a part of it (I’m in touch and feeling connected with so many people who I used to just hear from at Christmastime) but I don’t want to let it suck away increasing amounts of my free time.

There is also the problem of anonymity vs. simplification. I’d love to put a string of social networking icons down the side of the page and go ahead and let the networks mingle, but my blogging has always been first-name-only, and I don’t feel ready to change that. I’ve never been all that hard-core about it (seriously, with just a bit of sleuthing, you could probably flesh out my ID), but my reason for leaving my last name out of the mix is, I think, still sound: it’s a very uncommon name. And some day, when Emmie is interviewing for her dream job, I don’t want her potential employer to do a pre-interview google search on her name and find a confusing muddle of her great deeds and the crazy rantings of her crackpot mother. Honestly, I don’t mind you knowing who I am.** I just don’t want The Google to know.

As always, thanks for reading and for your comments! Let me know what’s on your mind (or if you think I butchered the links!) — and by all means, let me know how you are coping with all the issues I’ve raised in this post! I need help sorting it all out!

Oh, and Happy Halloween! Have fun tonight!

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*One of my pet peeves has become the replication of data from one site to another — i.e. repeating your tweets and/or blog posts on facebook (I do admit to being guilty of this myself on occasion, as I experiment with what goes where). It annoys me to find myself reading the same things over again. And if all you’re doing is importing content from one place to another, why should I bother with your twitter feed and/or blog AND your facebook feed (or more to the point, why are you bothering with them?)?

**If you want to be facebook buddies or whatnot, just shoot me an email!

Chicago was great. I haven’t had much luck with wifi this summer, though, so once again, I have a lot of catching up to do! I also have tons of photos — hopefully I’ll get to the processing some time in the next day or two… more later…

The title line comes from Ziggy Stardust. I was sitting here thinking about what to say with regard to today’s 10K Monkeys anniversary when it just suddenly hit me that David Bowie had already done the job for me (listen to the song below).

It was a Sunday afternoon in 2004 when I tapped out my inaugural post (not my most original material, but I was following tradition). I was on LJ back then (probably the only person older than 16 there at the time!). Emmie had decided I needed a journal and set it up for me and wow!… I’ve been blathering away ever since!

Sorry about the big mess of things here. I’m fixing the IE issue by (inelegantly) switching to a new template. The fastest way to work is to let it be ugly for a little while, but hopefully it won’t last long…

UPDATE: well, it’s going to last a little while… even though things are still screwy, I have to go work out and then I have a meeting. Maybe I’ll have time to fix it all tonight…

ps. Oh, css, how you drive me insane!!!