blogging

Ned accidentally erased his blog yesterday. He's trying to get more organized and in his attempt to get used to google calendar and Gmail, he somehow deleted his old account and lost his blog.

We were talking about it this morning, about how the purpose of online interaction has changed for us lately, the way the work and life mix and the things we choose to share with the world as well as how we choose to spend our time.

A few weeks ago, in a blog entry by YanivG, I came to realize something I was feeling for a while but ignoring. Flickr isn't fun anymore. what's more I don't feel incline to share too much in it. A lot of times before, when I went to do something exciting or just wonder around I would take a photo and the purpose of it was to put it in flickr so that my friends will see it. Now, I don't feel like that anymore, which is a shame, both cause I miss the community, and because it makes me take a lot less photos.

I haven't been blogging for a while, I mean, not really, I put up photos and some short texts, but I haven't been writing or sharing anything meaningful in this format for a while. I read a lot more blogs then before and I read al ot more on other type of websites and social networks, but I produce a lot less content in those formats, I make art, I put it on Etsy to sell, I'm promoting the shop as much as I can and updating our websites, but somehow I feel like the sense of community is mostly gone. Some of it moved into facebook, some replaced by human interaction. Mostly I feel more content to spend time with myself and feel the need ot share diminish.

The thought of Ned not blogging really scared me, I'm not sure why, maybe because I like blogging and I like being a part of the online world when I was more into it, and his choice to maybe not blog anymore made me admit defeat as well. Maybe it's because our public display of affection, him writing about me, taking my photos and spending time on expressing his love in a public way was very affirming to me. It made me feel protected, as if by making it public, he's making it real. Maybe it's the fear of loosing this almost objectifying-kinky-wild part of our relationship.

Today at blackbird, a guy tapped Ned's shoulder and asked him a random question, it turned out he wrote us an e-mail a couple of days before. He knows us from flickr and were impressed with our lives and art and photography. We set and talked with him and his partner for a couple of hours, it was a really wonderful experience. getting to know someone new in a random and cool way, based on a pretty deep knowledge of us from online. It really reminded me of the importance of public sharing and public expression of feelings, thoughts and images.

I'm not sure what's going to happened next. If I can get myself motivated to express myself in this way again, if photos and words can become as important to me as they used to be, and if that's even something I should aspire to, and if "should" is a word that should be used in matter of aspirations.