mixed media sandwiches
Matt's Congrats if you've found this, showing how social mediums can complement each other, is a refreshing take:
My intent on this blog is to write things that fall somewhere between a tweet and a substack newsletter. I find a lot of things fall into that category. I'm also looking for a place where I can publish the first draft without either bothering people (Substack's problem) or igniting rage responses (Twitter's).
His thoughts on abundant scales for writing length and demand reminded me of how I explored practice across timescales myself.
Combining those scales inspired a neat sandwich metaphor: time scales are the bread containing a filling of typically various activities. Both the bread and the filling ingredients likely vary in taste, texture, and other dimensions, whether relative to each other or even themselves. Activity placement or quantity within the sandwich informs taste from an ingredient level to a sandwich level. Like sandwiches you have eaten, you may desire different harmonies between ingredients in every bite.
With that model in mind, Matt transcended the false dichotomy of social media and personal websites by trying out both in his sandwich. He transformed it into even more of a mixed media sandwich if you will. His approach is a nice change of pace to directives like John's Write more, about anything, on a personal website, not social media. Yet, swapping out a single word of his broadens possibilities for your writing and overall communications too:
Write more, about anything, on a personal website, and social media.
Moreover, adding a blog introduced both quantitative and qualitative gains to his sandwich, rather than subtracting from it. While addition isn't always positive and subtraction isn't always negative, you may surprise yourself with how diverse yet tasty your sandwich can become. John seems to vibe with my point, claiming that The more personal websites there are, the better the web will be. Still, we can go above and beyond that horizon:
The more platforms, websites, and accounts there are, the better the web will be.
I'm curious about your thoughts on the above metaphor and the talking points surrounding it:
- What does your sandwich look like for whatever niche and timescale?
- How do you want it to look like?
- How do its activities, platforms, and other existent ingredients inform dimensions like taste, texture, and more?
- What ingredients or qualities thereof would get your sandwich looking like how you want it?
- Who else shares your taste in sandwiches?
- If you aren't already in their good graces, how can you get in theirs?