So, it turns out I don't like blogging.

Prior to JSGS882 I did not have a blog and I did not Tweet. I had a twitter account, but mainly to watch others, not to have others watch me. In fact, it weirded me out when people followed me. Prior to JSGS882 I had 4 or 5 followers. I made my first tweet ever, and tweeted 22 times for JSGS 882. I gained 17 followers, and even got a few likes (46 to be exact!). Twitter analytics tell me I had a 2.6% engagement rate. After the high of seeing 46 likes, seeing 2.6% is kind of a bummer.

While I appreciated being able to share learning with fellow students of JSGS 882 through Twitter and the other platforms we used in class, keeping up with Twitter is a job in itself. Without it being a course requirement, I don’t feel I have time for Twitter and I don’t think I’ll be keeping it up. It was a lot of work for little engagement. And there’s too much pressure to get likes and retweets. Doesn’t anyone like me?

About blogging, that too is not my cup of tea. I don’t have anything that needs to be blogged about so badly that I will put my time and effort into it. Again, I enjoyed being able to share a book review with my class, and it was better than handing out paper copies. But most people that I know who blog prolifically do so because it is their job, or they are really passionate about a topic (and then it usually becomes their job anyway). Maybe it’s my life circumstances right now, but I don’t have time to blog. If I want to update friends and family on my kids, or share a missing person post, or creep on people, I use Facebook. I don’t need another forum. And related to tweeting, I don’t like people watching me. On the blog, I had 77 page views, only 8 of which were from Canada. Now, most didn’t really interact with my blog. I only had 5 page views on my book review. That makes me wonder, even if it were my job, or I was really so passionate about something that I just had to blog about it…. Would any one look beyond the surface and actually read my posts?

Now, it might sounds like I just absolutely hated all of this. I didn’t. It was an interesting assignment which forced me to go outside my comfort zone and learn something new. Maybe when life settles down and I find a passion (backyard chickens, maybe?) I’ll take up blogging and Twitter. But for now, I’m letting it go.