Getting back in touch
Aloha!
You might be wondering who this email is from? My name is David Johnson. A while back, maybe a long while back, you signed up to join the mailing list on my website - Crossing The Threshold. Whether you signed up a few months ago or a few years back, of late things have been silent here. I apologise for that.
This new email feels like a reemergence, and I offer it to share with you the changes that I have made to my online presence and what I have planned going forward.
Something wasn't working
In recent months I have come to understand that I have long felt uncomfortable with my presence online, both my website and social media. They were not working for me, but I was not able to put my finger on why. In fact I don't think that I was even able to be honest with myself and notice that they weren't working for me. Too many "shoulds" were at play in defining for me how I interact online, and with the benefit of hindsight I believe that those shoulds were playing against my introverted and highly sensitive nature.
My nature wanted a quieter online experience, both visually and experientially in terms of the volume and content of the material that I was being exposed to. I have come to understand that:
- My website felt too content rich, made up of too many elements and so very high maintenance. There was too much going on for me. The words, “too busy” come to mind, though even that does not quite capture it.
- I had joined most social media platforms, either with the intention of keeping in contact with family and friends or for promoting my business. Try as I might, I never felt comfortable in them. Despite advice from well meaning and helpful colleagues, I could not find the right groove that worked for me.
Quite by chance I came across the relatively new platform, micro.blog. It's a blogging platform while at the same time having some social media attributes. You can blog in long form and also just submit a short post. Other users can engage you in conversations (replies) related to your posts. However, there are some restrictions in micro.blog and those restrictions have gone a long way in determining the sort of person that shows up on the platform and the type of conversations that happen. You won't find “Likes” there. You aren’t able to find out how many people are following you. Certain ways of behaviour are not tolerated. There are no advertisements and the timeline is not controlled by an algorithm determining what you see and don’t see. Finally, if you want to really benefit from the platform, there is a small monthly fee.
The Change
Since coming across and opening a micro.blog account, I have closed all my social media accounts, but Twitter. I have changed the platform that hosts my website to a place that I find a lot easier to maintain, and quieter - it is now, for the most part, just text based.
In short I have paired down, and simplified my way of being online.
The upshot of all of this is feeling revitalized about sharing online, keener to write and looking forward to producing content, whether long or short, to share with my audience.
What does this mean for you?
I plan to get back to producing a newsletter. My newsletter host is also much simpler to use and will be mainly just text. It will be a simple letter, written occasionally, on no particular schedule, but never to overload your Inbox. As I write this I see myself sharing with you my thoughts or items I have found related to living as an introvert and highly sensitive person, possibly with some meditative reflections included. If there is a major addition to my website, I’ll share that here as well.
I hope that you choose to stay with me, but if you would like to unsubscribe, just follow the link below.
In the meantime
- You can find my latest blog posts, an archive of my meditation podcast, Behind the Thoughts, and my Meditation eBook at the new incarnation of my website.
- My micro.blog feed consists more of more day to day updates and photographs. You can view it even if you are not on the platform.
- A short and recent podcast interview with me by Jean MacDonald, Community Manager of micro.blog, can be found here.
Oh, and you might also be wondering about why the “Aloha” greeting? Home for me now is Hawaii. The last 12 years has seen me slowly migrate from the Welsh countryside to the islands of Hawaii. I miss the former, while embracing the beauty of the latter.
Thank you for being here.
David.