Thoughts from a Laundry room | About writing styles, perspective and a bit of usage of the Communities feature on Steem

in Freewriters4 years ago

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This is probably my first thoughts from a post in a month. I used to write posts like these two or three times a week until February, where I got some feedback about them. While still being very interesting to read, achieving engagement from the readers and overall, entertaining, they probably were too personal.

There's no such thing as too personal, you may refute. You would be right to say this, actually. There's no such thing as a too personal post, broadly speaking. We can write about whatever we want on chain, it's up to us and only us what we share, how we share it, what we decide to include and what not to.

Well, the feedback I got made me realize perhaps I was sharing too much. Maybe I was sharing things I deemed as not too personal or as just some details here and there about my life. This feedback came with the best intentions, in fact, it never questioned my writings, it just explored the form we share things in social media, how we engage within it and how it influences our mood, form of living and way we are ourselves/others.

It got me thinking. I started to question how much am I sharing of my public figure and how much of my personal self gets to keep engraved on chain.

I want to give you some context:

I began my public writing life doing so as an adventure/travel blogger, where everything I wrote about was mainly regarding my journey around the world, focusing mostly in places, experiences and a bit of personal thoughts. These kind of posts were entertaining and I - generally - was sharing in Steem what I would share on Facebook or Instagram: pictures of places, narrations of my adventures, descriptions of people or experiences and somewhat personal happenings, but they were all shallow if you may, perhaps the correct word is superficial. Again, nothing I wouldn't share on Facebook or Instagram, nothing I wouldn't mind my grandma, my best friend or my biggest enemy - if that exists - to know about.

Then, after I became more experienced in writing and in making interesting, engaging posts, I began to explore the freewrite style. On these freewrites, I used to focus on specific public topics or general knowledge subjects. Nothing you wouldn't discuss in a book club, in a chat room or in a coffee shop with a bunch of strangers. The posts were mostly about my opinions regarding the Blockchain, social aspects of it and how can we relate them to real life, and also freewrites about the world out there and how society interacts with it. Again, nothing I wouldn't discuss with a classroom or in a social gathering where you meet the friends of your friend's friends - got it? Quite the riddle. I never wrote about personal stuff.

A couple of years passed and one fine line I drew for myself began to become blurry. I missed one very important thing writers must always keep in mind: perspective.

Sure, every writer imprints a bit of himself on every piece they write, there's always something personal on every story, you can never detach from your write-ups as much as you would like to.

My mistake, or perhaps just my writing style lacking perspective, was to begin doing freewrites about the same societal topics, but putting in too much of my personal life, and not thoughts, into them. After a while, my freewrites became more like updates about my personal life. Of course I wasn't sharing really personal details, but I realized I was beginning to share things that I would like to keep to myself, not because I am ashamed of them, but more about keeping them dear to my heart and just for myself.

I'm not an avid mainstream social media user and I barely share stuff on Facebook or Instagram, and yet there I was, sharing very personal details about my life with a bunch of strangers.

Nothing wrong with that, after all, my readers really enjoyed reading those posts, they always got a lot of engagement and comments and in general, those posts were written from the heart.

I began writing them thinking about my future kids and wife, for them to read and get to know who I was when I was younger… see, I'm starting to share personal shit again. I can't help it, it's just the way I write. I mix thoughts, opinions and personal details to enrich the reading experience. But I'll stop, I'm in fact trying to keep my write-ups to only be about thoughts and opinions, leaving all the personal stuff out.

Don't get me wrong. It's not like I don't want you to read some details about my life, it's just that I only want a few selected people to know about them. It's like giving those special people in my life the exclusivity of knowing about them.

That's why I don't share shit on Instagram or Facebook, because I believe there's only a few people that should know, that I want them to know, what I've been up to lately, at all times.

Well, it's the same here.

I guess my perspective got blurry because I always wanted to write about something. Because to be a good writer you need to write daily. What I didn't get is that I don't need to publish it, and I only got to that conclusion thanks to the feedback I got a month ago. I don't need to publish everything I write.

But you see, this is where it gets interesting.

Now that we have communities, we can actually write about a lot of topics without feeling our post will get lost in between the hundreds of other posts published every hour on Steem.

We can write about anything on Steem and engage with specific audiences, knowing that like minded people will read our posts. There's no need to constantly come up with topics that you think that your audience will be interested in - something that happened to me quite frequently - because now, you can actually slam your posts towards readers you know they are interested about what you have to say.

I'm really excited about the future of the Steem Blockchain, at least regarding the usage we can give to communities. I know that now, I'll be able to draw the line on the topics I write about and I'll get some outside perspective - mainly from myself - about the way my posts are going.

And to think this all came from someone else reading a post of mine and raising a question about society, giving feedback more about the way we humans interact with social media and the reasons behind these interactions.

All I can say is, thank you for that feedback, you unknowingly gave me the perspective I needed to regain my own long blurred perspective.

This is probably the reason I hadn't posted a Thoughts from a kind of freewrite, because I was giving this topic some thinking now and then. I guess I couldn't get myself to write a new thoughts from a post until I got my perspective back and I made up my mind about how I felt about it.

My clothes are ready, it's time for me to go. Oh yeah, I was doing my laundry just now, and that's as much you're getting from my personal like now, I hope it's enough, and if it's not, well, I think I can live with that.

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A lavar ropa, no queda de otra amigo @anomadsoul, saludos desde chile para ti

Posted using Partiko Android

I've been blogging/oversharing on the interwebz since 2005, and I can wicked relate to...

I guess I couldn't get myself to write a new thoughts from a post until I got my perspective back and I made up my mind about how I felt about it.

And thanks for the reminder - it's been about a week since hubby & our boy (I can't drive & our girls do their own) last visited the laundromat, so I should probably give them a nudge...😂

Esta publicación ha sido seleccionada para el reporte de Curación Diaria.

final de post.png¡¡¡Felicidades!!!

I am coming back here to write a "proper" comment. Much food for thought. And makes me refelect on my own lines in the sand and whether (or not) I'm crossing them.

We must not air our dirty laundry in public, right? I always line-dried my laundry even when I lived in town. Oops. Some neighborhoods prohibit this (beware the socks and underwear!). Airing our thoughts, ideas, photos is different, right? Right?
....to be a good writer you need to write daily. What I didn't get is that I don't need to publish it... I don't need to publish everything I write.

That's a lesson I've had to learn too. Define "too personal." Isn't writing by nature personal? Don't even the best of us reveal our underlying beliefs and agenda no matter how hard we try to sound neutral?

As for communities - I'm glad you see the good. I'm still irked by the eenie-meenie-meinie- mo of which hive to choose.