Recently I started a tumblelog on Tumblr. I wanted to see what was out there - I figured that I work with Movable Type every day and it'd probably be a good idea to get a handle on the competition. I had heard about Tumblr before but it never really made sense to me. It seemed so stripped down, what could you possibly do with it? Then I actually started using it.

It was like a whole different world. I could post short little notes, almost like a sketchbook. Suddenly I felt free to post whatever caught my fancy, whatever crossed my path at the moment and seemed interesting and noteworthy. My attitude towards posting had suddenly changed. I think over the years I've come to regard this blog (run on MT) as something that needed thought and had to be...well, interesting. I couldn't clog it up with frilly little posts, I had to really consider what I was putting out there. Which meant that I posted less and less as time went on...I sort of felt this pressure that what I was writing had to be good.

In a way, Tumblr freed me of that. The learning curve is barely a bump, it takes almost nothing to get it going and to customize it a bit. It's minimal in a really great way.  It's like it makes the task of blogging almost transparent - it's a tool that you use that you don't have to think about, it just works. Sure, Movable Type is super powerful and customizable to the nth degree, but sometimes I don't want that, I just don't have the time for it. (have you noticed how the design of this freaking blog has totally languished?)

I've been comparing the relationship that I have between MT and Tumblr with painting and mixed media. With painting, you could do anything in the world, there are so many options. You're presented with a completely blank canvas and you have to run with it. In a way it's kind of scary. Mixed media, on the other hand, is based on whatever you've gathered - newspapers, magazine clippings, junk that you found at the local thrift shop. Suddenly having some parameters is comforting, yet liberating at the same time. It just depends on how I need to work at the moment.

Now I just have to install the Actionstreams plugin on this blog so that I can get my tumblelog, flickr stream and last.fm playlist in one place.