It's only in the last year, since the conception of Cautious Train really, that we have truly begun to embrace and familiarise ourselves with social media - Facebooking, Twittering and diving headfirst into the blogosphere. Now we thought the hardest part would be finding decent and read-worthy enough content to keep our own blog updated with. This has in fact proven a challenge, and only time will tell whether we are truly blog-worthy bloggers. But worst still is the feeling we've missed so much.
I stop by www.indiewire.com on a regular basis, but only of late. I know I'm only, like, 15 years behind the times! I'll be there, poring over fascinating blogs from industry stalwarts like Peter Bogdanovich (http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/) and Ted Hope (http://blogs.indiewire.com/tedhope/), and all I can help thinking is where do I start?? I mean these blogs go back quite a way, with so many juicy updates, that I'm left feeling like I've come late to every party and I'll never catch up. And that's just indiewire for crying out loud.
I've only just started "listing" on Twitter and I already follow in excess of 40 blogs, most of which I haven't even had the time to explore yet. There just aren't enough hours in the day for all this super relevant, engaging, informative content. Now I'm not normally one for gushing, but how do you deal with getting through this bounty of brilliance? Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of nonsensical trash out there (sometimes I'm baffled as to how Kim Kardashian has in excess of 12million Twitter followers and Werner Herzog only 25k). I come back to this time and time again - Ted Hope's term "super-abundance". Example: how to set yourself out as a truly noteworthy filmmaker amongst the digital millions out there with an iphone, pirated copy of adobe premiere and a Youtube channel. But when it comes to wading through the super-abundance of crap to find what you really like to watch, read, follow, engage in, I find this a little less daunting, because I know what I don't like. But when I whittle down the super-abundance, I'm left with an abundance...of brilliant f***ing things I want to look at all day. How do you navigate without constantly feeling your missing something?
My memory also fails me repeatedly in this respect. Sometimes I feel I have the short term memory of a trauma victim. Now, if my memory serves me (hmm), there are no significant head injuries in my history. But suffice to say, if I don't instantly bookmark a page, and dawdle away from it, it's wiped from my brain within minutes. I'll read lots of lovely articles, watch gorgeous videos, and the next day half of them are gone. If I don't talk about them, share them, then and there, then there isn't a hope I'll ever mention it again. It sounds drastic, but it's really not a medical condition. Perhaps too much Super Mario and not enough Brain Training on the Nintendo DS.
As with this and the previous "anti-populist" blog entry - this is all beginning to sound a bit "from the psychologist's chair". I have to ask, myself and anyone one else reading, how does this "need to be in the know" reflect on the personality? And why can't I be happy with the content I'm finding now, and look forward to all the future findings? Why am I always looking backward, discontented? It's probably why I have a hard time starting anything new. How do you keep up with the curve, and catch up on what's already happened? What I'm really asking for is a time machine, photographic memory and an 8 day (minimum) week. Simple.
Sara
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