Many years back, I used to maintain journals.  Entries on paper, a line or many lines written daily and then occasionally re-read after the year passed and then in a few years consigned to the recycle bin.

Then along came the internet.  In the latter part of the ’90s, I wrote emails – long ones – that had now come to take the place of both the snail-mail as well as my journals as I could use the messages the “sent” folder to keep track of my own life.

And then blogs became common place and I really enjoyed the period in the mid-2000s when I blogged for a handful of close family and friends who read and commented on this.

It was all very well till Facebook came along.  The posts became shorter – and the audience dramatically larger.  People could like my writing at the press of a button and this fed a narcissism I had not experienced before.  It was easy to dialogue, discuss and argue points, and the relative brevity implied it became less burdensome to worry about expanding one’s ideas to the detail that was needed on a blog.  And one could post pictures  and links and anything else too.

But the pictures led directly to Instagram…..even less pressure to even describe what is in a picture, excellent editing aids to enhance pictures and render them just right,….and where Facebook still draws one in and causes you to engage in fruitless arguments with a bunch of strangers, Instagram is about appreciating a picture and moving on.

And now I realize I miss the extended prose of journals – and blogs. Have returned to this now, let’s see if I still have the vocabulary, structure and patience to keep writing longer thoughtful and hopefully thought-provoking pieces.