On Investing Time Writing a Daily Blog Post daily

For years, spending time on social media was an investment that paid dividends. One of my UN jobs was connected directly with responding to a tweet about them looking for an archivist. Within a day I had an interview and within a few days I was working. That was back in 2014 or so, when social media was more convivial.

The issue with social media today is that we spend hours, and hours, and hours scrolling, looking for conversations and we sent hundreds, if not thousands of messages without a response. The consequences are double. The first is that we are visibly wasting our time. The entire world can see that we’re “wasting” time on social media. The irony is that when I lived in London, until a decade ago, social media was an investment. The more time you devoted to networking, the more connections, and potential collaborations you would create.

Today, if I spend half an hour on Twitter and comment, it won’t be seen, because my account is private due to the risk of trolls and being flamed. With Facebook and Threads, often the people that have time to comment, are not the people that you desire to connect with.

In theory Linkedin is the best solution, to network, to find opportunities, except for one critical design flaw. Everyone is brilliantly happy to promote their success, rather than genuine about needing help and solutions, out in the open. If you’re struggling, it’s a bad sign, and yet if everything is going you’re allowed to be visible. In effect it’s encouraging people to be isolated through failure, rather than joined through success.

Some people like to write a weekly newsletter. I prefer to write a daily blog post. I will often see that I have zero readers, for several posts in a row, which is both discouraging, and disheartening. If no one is reading, then why do I waste time writing?

The answer is in the question. The time that I spend writing is mindful, is creative, requires me to think. Plenty of my blog posts have zero value, which is why no one reads them. At the same time every blog post written is practice. Every minute spent writing makes it easier for me to write well, once I have a topic of interest to others.

And finally, in my eyes, “doom scrolling” or wasting my time and attention on social media rewards those that made it toxic, and a waste of time in the first place. If my eyeballs are scrolling, and seeing toxic posts, as they do on Facebook, and Threads, then my own interactions will reflect it.

By blogging I am being mindful, I am thinking, I am ordering ideas, I am sharing things that I am in the process of learning, and more. For me blogging is an investment. Social media was social, but now utilitarianism, by others has made it worthwhile to blog again.