Taking Charge

One of the things that I realized yesterday is that I always have 4 tabs open in my browser. Always. Livejournal, Gmail, Plurk and Twitter. I also check Facebook, Myspace and MyYearbook regularly as well. Plus I have some other sites that I don’t check as often. I have each account for a different reason.

Facebook – I keep my Facebook fairly recent because I have connected with some high school and college friends there, plus there are a few of my other friends who are either there exclusively or use it more than other things.

Myspace – Before Facebook, that was the place to connect with those from HS/College/etc.

MyYearbook – I don’t even know how I found it, but I keep it up to date for a single person – an old friend whom I lost touch with years ago. The reconnection with this particular friend is quite important to me, so I check there for messages from him.

Plurk – I love plurk. I had plurk before it was ‘cool’ but didn’t use it much. It’s fun, it’s interactive, and I’ve made a lot of great friends through plurk, plus a met a couple people that remind me why I keep to myself (more on that in another post) a lot.

Twitter – I’ve been on twitter for as long as I’ve known about twitter. I deleted my original Twitter account but recreated a short time later. I like twitter because it works with my cell phone, unlike livejournal, plurk and most other services. I can send short updates via text when I’m out and it makes a great way to make a bullet list post to livejournal or other sites via loudtwitter for things to expound on when there’s time.

That’s not really the point of this post. The point is that it seems like a lot of people spend their time online chasing from site to site to keep up with the people they care about. I know that’s how I feel. This isn’t new, though, it’s been going on since there were ways for people to communicate other than via e-mail. If you think about it, there is IRC with hundreds of servers, each with hundreds and up to thousands of channels for people to chat in. There is Yahoo chat, AOL chat, other web-based chats and various different messenger services. My personal preference for Instant Messaging is MSN/Windows Live Messenger. Others prefer AIM or Yahoo and that’s fine. I have all of them, it’s not a big deal, really.

I feel, a lot of times, that I’m spreading myself too thin and wonder how many others feel the same way but don’t know what to do about it. It’s hard to say no when you really want to be where your friends are, but it’s also hard to juggle so much stuff and not drop the ball sometimes. Recently, a good friend said that they spend more time on Facebook because it’s more accessible from their cell phone. I don’t really understand that, tbqh, because any cell phone with a web browser can access most any site quite easily. Most major sites have mobile versions of their sites for just that reason. Heck, there are even apps for the iPhone for livejournal. But anyway, that’s just my thoughts.

What’s the point of all this? Who knows, perhaps it’s just me making up my mind to stop chasing people from site to site on a daily basis. I know that I’ve been neglecting my livejournal because of it. I don’t like that, since I’ve been on livejournal for so long. Created on 2001-04-29. There are no visible entries prior to 1/1/08, however, but I’ve been here and been posting all that time. 2806 Days ago, I joined livejournal. I have posted 4241 Entries. Average of 1.5 entries per day. Last time I did an average, the average was 2.5 entries per day, which means that in the last year, I’ve posted far less than I used to.

I could blame plurk, twitter, etc, for my lack of posting. This is only half of the reason, though. The rest is all me. I do hope to change that, however. We’ll see.