It's now eight years since I wrote the first post in Living Wittily. I didn't know then I'd be doing it eight years later, and this would be post number 2,095! Over that time I've made friends with fellow bloggers, had thousands of comments and email exchanges, learned a lot, been welcome in other people's blog homes and overall have had a lot of fun. It has also provided a forum for learning and conversing, exploring ideas and sharing in a wider community of writers and thoughtful folk.
In the summer I dived into Facebook which is a very different form of social exchange and interchange. Occasionally I link this blog to Facebook if I think my friends will be interested, or the topic is important enough. By the way my friends on Facebook are just that – with only one or two exceptions I know all of them, have met nearly all of them, and quite a number of them are essential parts of my life's landscape. The word friend is too precise and precious to be discounted in the interests of impressing others or deluding myself with the vast number of "friends" I pretend to have. I refuse to devalue the word friend to the equivalent of a click on a button. And don't get me started on the relational oxymoron "unfriend"!
Facebook has raised the practical point of whether to keep two platforms going though. It takes time, thought and energy to write regularly, in an open ended commitment, something worth reading. I refuse to have a blog that isn't updated and as current as it needs to be to connect with others, and be a genuine contribution to thinking carefully and living wittily. Would Living Wittily be missed if it quietly retired? Does there come a time when you've said enough, and sometimes more than enough? What does a Blog offer that Facebook doesn't? Why spend time writing stuff for what in the end is either a small audience? Or for those who come upon it by chance and by Google – I see these last two as equivalents if not synonymous!
All of this I've been pondering. Over the months when I've been active on Facebook and maintaining the presence of Living Wittily I've tried to keep the two as separate voices, but with consistency of tone and worldview. Yes, worldview! The way I see the world is through the wide angled lens of my Christian faith. Living Wittily is intentionally the voice of someone trying to faithfully follow Jesus and live under the rule of Christ. My take on current affairs, ethical tensions, human relationships, theological abseiling and philosophical snowboarding is self-consciously and joyfully Christian. Faith, friends, food, fun and filosophy isn't a bad life menu. My Facebook pagecomes out of the same worldview, the same voice, mostly touching on similar ways of seeing the world, and speaking out of the same community of faith, with ears, eyes, arms and heart open to this God-loved world of ours.
So Living Wittily will continue for a while yet. Until I start repeating myself. Until I start repeating myself.
Eight years ago I outlined what Living Wittily was about – a post that was really a manifesto. Having read it again, I still stick to it, and try to write out of it. You can read it here if you're interested.
The photos: Me at the Echt Agricultural Show; The fireworks at Aberdeen Beach; and the Colossian Tapestry, completed in 2014.
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