A Little Pruning

Stepping out of the communities...

We all need to do some pruning in our lives. We've accumulated a lot of physical and digital junk! I think pruning and cleaning is an incredibly important and therapeutic activity that more people need to do.

I've been trying to do a lot more cleaning lately than I have before. This means that I go into the deep and dark corners to find things that I no longer need and figure out what to do with them. I can donate them or toss them in the trash. The important thing is that I don't really need to bring it back! The same can be said of things like Hive..

When Communities came out, it was an amazing thing. No longer did we need to search post tags or rely strictly on who we were following or people who came to our post to have a discussion. We could organize topics and people around a certain thing we called a Community. It was a really incredible, yet very basic thing that made big improvements in navigating the chain! I remember it well, as well as the time before it existed.

Over time though, I've added more and more communities to my list. The communities have come and gone and I'm finding myself posting in MAYBE 10 of them tops. This means that there are a lot of communities that are in my list that are simply not needed. I can aspire to visit them here and there but the fact of the matter is - do I really need to subscribe to "X" community? I didn't choose a name so that I don't offend someone for the community they enjoy but it is an accurate and necessary thought. The chances of me posting in them are on a smaller scale, and an even smaller scale is me being able to find some time to visit them and explore posts.

I would love to be able to get to those areas more often, but the fact of the matter is simply time. I know time is a luxury especially with kids, so I have to limit myself to a window of interaction which is both good and bad. A few weeks ago I realized that the window is needed for certain things like engagement of people I know and interact with regularly, with the occasional sprinkling of a new person or post. Other than that, sadly those communities don't go visited.

Where it is a little funny, and annoying in the kindest way, is that when I try to figure out what community my post is going to go in.. the big list of communities I follow comes up. I have to scroll past the dead ones or the ones that I have minimal interest in spending time in or writing content for and then it gets to where I have to go further than is necessary.

It may seem pretentious to want to scroll less, but at least I'm honest :D. I had to be real with myself and reduced the volume of communities I follow. It felt good too because I was able to really refine it down to communities I have posted in, or want to post in. I aspired to get to some of them but reality hit, and it just didn't work out. Maybe one day I will get back to them but who knows!

What about you, have you tried to do some pruning of the people and communities you follow to reduce some clutter? Let me know in the comments!