I’ve never been one of the heavier social media users. I don’t and have never had the apps on my phone, for example. I’ve always needed to log in via my computer browser each time I wanted to check in on them.

I’ve noticed, though, that in the last several months I’ve had even less interest in spending time there. I’ve reduced my social-media engagement to Bluesky exclusively, and I’ll check in there maybe once a day on most days to see what my frequent interlocutors have going on, but I don’t feel compelled to visit the site and I don’t feel compelled to share much.

These days, I find myself craving longer form and more personal interactions. In digital spaces, that’s meant more private chat groups on Signal with people I know personally. Even then, I don’t have many chat groups. Just a handful.

In “real” life (though the line between “real” and “digital” feels disturbingly fine these days), I prefer phone calls where I can hear the voices of my friends and family and exchange with them in real time and, when possible, in-person interactions. These don’t have to be lengthy phone or in-person engagements, mind you. But even a brief interaction along these lines feels more real, more connected, more contributory to fortifying genuine communion and community than exchanging brief texts does.

Toward the end of last year, I mused a bit on this blog. I’ve kept it since 2012, which makes it a relic of an earlier time. (Makes me one, too.)

Over these years, this blog has taken different directions and focused on different subjects, but everything I’ve posted has angled more toward my personal musings in that moment than toward the happenings of my personal life, although the travel posts I’ve put up in recent years might edge in that direction. (Not that I ever share anything too close to the vest in any of those posts, but still.)

I’ve had an itch to evolve the blog again going forward. What form that evolution will take, I still haven’t fully determined. I will base this evolution, though, in my recent musings about the types of communion I crave.

This blog gets most of its traffic from search engines. People who come in via search results typically go to specific how-to posts and then immediately leave. I do get some visits via social media links, though that traffic is far, far smaller—and I don’t post most of what I put up on this blog on social media feeds, anyway. I only toss up on social media the things I think might be interesting to anyone connected to me on a given platform, and that’s only when I remember to do so.

However, some of you have taken the time to more dedicatedly follow this blog somehow, whether via an RSS reader, signing up for The Letter, or dropping in from time to time to see what’s new.

Like you, I’m a blog fan. I eagerly follow several blogs through Feedly, and I feel far more excited to read a new blog post than I do to open a social media app these days. The interaction through blogs, even when I don’t comment on an entry, feels more genuine and real and organic and, these days, I crave genuine and real and organic.

Following a blog takes interest and investment, which means the people engaging over blogs likely share an increased level of common interests and sympathies and ground than they do with the other people who, like them, randomly pop into social media apps to see what their feeds show them when they’re bored.

What does all this mean for this site?

I’m still figuring it out, exactly. My posting frequency here may or may not change, but I’ll likely focus more on musings, bizarre research I’ve done because something has piqued my interest, and general where-my-head’s-at updates than I have in the recent past. I may not get too personal (though who knows), but it could get a little more so.

In this vein, I’d love to know what you enjoy reading when it comes to the blogs you follow. Sure, sure, I’ll still post what I post (this is my playspace, after all), but if you’re a blog reader, what sort of posts do you enjoy most on the blogs you frequent? What kinds of posts do you wish you found more often, whether here or elsewhere?