Clattertron

[dc]I[/dc] send out a new email newsletter every week through MailChimp (sign up here), and decided to back up my old newsletters here. This is Clattertron Newsletter #4 – Changes from July 31, 2015. 

When it comes to my online life, I’m all about change. Shaking stuff up every few months, or years, just for the thrill of it—and for experimentation sake.

Three years into this webcomic thing (and longer for blogging in general), and I’m still waiting to break out as the kids say. Or the adults like me who cry themselves to sleep say. So, I’m always up for change to see if it is the Big Change I needed.

ANYWAY

A couple of changes of note.

First, I turned comments back on for Clattertron. I didn’t turn them off for any major reason in the first place, other than I didn’t get a lot of comments and didn’t see the point in offering something which was not being used.

I’m a firm believer in the never read the comments motto when it comes to pretty much everything online. And yet, there are exceptions. The Bloggess features a very active (and usually universally positive) commenting community. Writers like John Scalzi engage with commenters on their own sites daily. (both blogs are recommend reading, by the way)

It’s the possibility of a community on my own website which sparked me to give comments another go. Sure, it means wading through a torrent of spammers and the like, but that’s why I use filters and moderation settings.

I’ll give it a few months, and if I don’t like the results (or don’t have any to speak of), I’ll turn them off again. Easy.

Second change, different from the first. I’m going on, for lack of a better phrase, a social media diet. Of sorts.

I will still post to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Instagram, but take a different approach. That is to say, not worry about it as much. Instead of checking my Big Three (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) every few minutes, I’m shooting for a breakfast-lunch-dinner schedule.

Realizing how much time in the day I spent using social media regularly stressed me out. It’s time I could be writing! It’s time I could be drawing! It’s time I could be knitting the cats tiny costumes! OK, maybe not the last one. Yet.

In my headcanon, I called this the endless feedback loop: check Facebook, check Twitter, check Instagram. Check Facebook again for responses to my posts or comments. Reply to the comments. Check Twitter. Go back to Facebook. Refresh Instagram again. ETC ETC ETC

Before I know it, too much time wasted, and I still haven’t written a blog post or began work on a comic.

So. Yes. Checking three times a day, and setting my bookmarks not to go to my main feed (ex: Clattertron’s Facebook page) and leaving my apps on pages other than their main feeds.

Will it work? Maybe. I started on Saturday, and I’m going strong so far. Again, there will be exceptions. Like NHL Trade Deadline Day or…uh…well, I’ll get back to you.

This doesn’t mean I will ignore replies or messages on social media sites. I just won’t see them as soon. Or keep refreshing, waiting for replies to my hilarious comments. And making attempts at hilarious replies to the replies to my hilarious comments. AND SO ON.

Honestly, based on my Twitter analytics, I shouldn’t even bother posting links to anything there.

I’m hoping too, this diet will spark me to write/create more content for my own website, instead of randomly firing off tweets, Facebook updates, or Instagram photo every few hours. Maybe take the idea of a tweet and expand it to a blog post or a comic.

There’s a design concept which might apply here: when you take something away, it makes everything else louder.

Here’s hoping.