This morning I spent a little time on one of the many long-standing, unfinished projects that just seem like they’ll never near completion: properly archiving and then printing hardcopies of the now defunct LiveJournal pages. This is easily the most daunting of the long-term tasks that never seem to near completion. I know it won’t take as long to complete as finishing Gaudi’s Sagrada Família, but it certainly feels that way.

While copying-and-pasting entries from November 2002 into a Word document, the number and size of the posts once again astounded me. Coincidentally, today marks the 15th anniversary of my very first LJ entry — a fact I didn’t properly recall until reviewing the site earlier today. The Word file dedicated to the 2002 posts is now complete through November 26, and is currently over 50 pages long. I’m fairly certain that’s far more than my combined posts to Facebook, Brick à Brac, LJ, and Twitter for all of this year.

Although a change of priorities is a primary cause for the decreased volume over time, the timestamps (as well as my own recollections) for most of the LJ posts make it clear that the overwhelming majority of the posts were written while goofing-off on the job. Looking back, it’s easy to see how that dynamic quickly transpired. Though qualified and possessing the necessary skills, I hated my job and was often happy to procrastinate and put forth the minimum necessary effort to complete the work. Combined with the ability to sense where corners could be easily cut, this resulted in a need to find something that would create the appearance of looking busy. Make sure you do your writing in Word, and it’s very easy to create that illusion.

Although that dynamic is no longer at play — the current paying gig is far more agreeable and provides more than enough work to keep busy — it’s disappearance doesn’t account for all of the decreased pixel generation. It’s not a coincidence that the first notable decrease in output corresponded with Facebook becoming my preferred social media platform. It’s a nice tool for keeping in touch with friends and family, but its design discourages the type of writing most frequently found in blogs and online journals. I adapted, but I also believe that my ability to write long, thoughtful entries suffered as a result. Taking the time to compose posts such as this just feels more difficult; that it takes more concerted effort than in the past. Like so many others, I often find the path of least resistance most tempting, and deviating sometimes seems non-rewarding — especially when Facebook allows readers to reward you with “Likes” and the feedback on a forum like this is much more limited.

It’s important to ultimately remember that writing on site such as WordPress or LiveJournal should primarily always be a personal endeavor. Though the work is harder, it’s also more personally fulfilling. Though you won’t get the rewards of posting frequently to Facebook, you will find that your voice is better used and understood. I won’t pretend that this particular entry will result in more frequent kinds of post. Simply, I’ve made and broken too many similar promises and resolutions over the past 5-10 years to foolishly express even a hope of this. However, reading some of those LJ entries from 2002 makes it clear that I’ve really lost something by not setting aside time to write more often in this manner.