I’ve not been blogging much here lately. I’m glad to have a decade’s worth of posts to look back on but I’ve been conspicuously not adding much to them. Social media have replace fed blogging – with hindsight, I’m not sure they’ve replaced the quality of the experience, but there we are.
Over the past few months, I’ve taken to making short videos and posting them on the homepage of this site. I’ve enjoyed the creative process, and as I added them I realised that I was following a few guiding principles. There were intuitive but I can put words to them.
I didn’t end them with the call-to-action that many folks have – you know, invitations to like or subscribe or plugs for workshops or merch. I do add a website link but that’s it.
I don’t generally add much in the way of advice though sometimes it leaks out.
I don’t have regular schedule for publishing (which many social media types insist I should). Instead, I like making them when I feel inspired. And if that means going three weeks without posting, no problem.
I don’t script them. What I do each time I think of idea is to record a rough, spontaneous first take to camera. And then generally forget about it for a night and come back to it next day. Then I try again, and do as many takes as it takes, to get a version I’m happy with. I don’t want it perfect and I go for a single take, with no editing (other than adding titles at beginning and end and fixing sound levels).
I try not to worry about how many views they get, but I enjoy it when I see people responding to them.
I think most social media have become very performative, so we’re constantly decoding what people are trying to signal and on defence against being sold to. I’m trying to offer something that doesn’t fall too far into that abyss.
Here are three of my favourites. (You can see all of them on the home page.)
