DeTumblrized, ReTwitterated

So, I have had a massive few weeks, and one thing I have learned as a life lesson is that when things get hard, the things you stop doing are the least central to your core.

While my mother’s recent health issues and her passing have had a devastating effect on nearly everyone in our sprawling family and multigenerational household — she and my father have lived with me for 20 years — I have found that certain touchstones of my life became actually more important and other everyday interests completely dropped off the charts.

I kept on blogging at /Message, my primary tech writing vehicle for these past 5 years.

Twitter remained central in my daily comings and goings, and it was the medium through which I received the most support in a dark, dark time. Again, thanks and love to all that passed on support, and later condolences, through the circles on Twitter.

But Tumblr, on the other hand, that shiny and glistening community of hipsters, had little appeal to me, in that time. And the nature of interaction there has been shaped by the way that I use Twitter: I have never  tried to deeply connect with people there. Perhaps it is based on the lack of a built-in comment system, or again, the way I had been using it:  as an appendix to the more central work and play on /Message and Twitter. 

I am sure that Tumblr serves as other people’s front porch, but for me it was more of an attic, or a garret.

Now that I have come to this small epiphany, I am uncertain what to do about it. But I see a new pattern appearing. First, I have gone back to using Publish2 to manage bookmarks and publishing links of a more general nature, and I integrated that into the main page here at /Message (See Stowe’s Links in the left margin). There is a feed of those, by the way, if you’d like to subscribe. Second, I have started to post things of a more general sort, here, at /Message. For example, a short while ago, I posted a piece about a new design for USB connectors (see Infinite USB Port) which is the sort of thing I would have posted at Tumblr in the past.

I am sure there are some things that I might want to keep off to the side, and not totally integrated here at /Message, but I am no longer sure that I want to do that in the context of the Tumblr style of social collision. I think I might just port some of the UnderpaidGenius blog here, at www.stoweboyd.com, but I don’t know.

I do know that when I went back to Tumblr I felt like I was in an art gallery with a lot of sophisticated people in it that I didn’t know very well.

Update on Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 2:12PM by Stowe Boyd  

Just discovered an import capability in Posterous that supports pulling stuff from Tumblr. Giving it a try. More to follow.