I’ve had tumblr for a little while now, and by a little while, I actually mean six months. Wow. Time flies when you’re scrolling in the deep, I suppose. One part of me just wants to rejoice, because in some ways, Tumblr (I never know when to capitalise that!) feels like some magic website of wonder and awe, the thing I’ve been missing without realising it all my life, and something I never want to give up. Part of me wants to rave about its brilliance, the other part is uncomfortably aware of the time I’ve wasted on that magical time-suck of a site, and all in all I’m of mixed opinion in regards to Tumblr.

At first, I suppose Tumblr drew me because it seemed like a magical paradise of all the most creative people in the world. I followed and liked and reblogged and filled my dashboard with beautiful photography, art, interior design, typography – you name it – everything beautiful and inspiring. And as I scrolled through the endless posts, I found myself thinking “wow, this is amazing! I’m so inspired!”

It was about three months of hardcore tumblogging later that I realised that no matter how inspired I claimed I was, I actually had not made anything of my own for a disturbingly long period of time. As much as tumblr boosts my inspiration, it saps my productivity beyond belief. A terrible procrastinator already, I was sinking to new levels.

In a way, I think it’s because Tumblr lends itself so much to procrastination. It’s easy, user-friendly, and very sneakily designed so as not to draw focus to the number of hours spent wasted scrolling through pretty images that, while lovely on the eye, really weren’t having any enormous impact on my life. If your dashboard is set to endless scrolling, which I believe is the default, and which mine certainly is, it’s hard to measure how long you’ve been sitting there scrolling. You don’t have constant page numbers flicking by, and unless you’re consistently checking the clock, which is very difficult what with the beautiful distractions on offer, it’s easy to spend several hours back-to-back scrolling, without any real indication that the time has passed. As a user, you don’t have to search for the content unless you wish to – follow a few blogs, and the content comes to you, and as you have complete control over who you follow, you’ve pretty much got complete control over the type of content that comes to you. Posting on tumblr is as easy as pressing a button and typing a few words, and the ease tends to lower my standards, just as twitter once did, though I rarely visit that site any more. A site so self-contained as tumblr has everything I need to amuse myself and waste away hours of my day, and so that’s what I was doing. The effort required for me to look at pretty things and like or reblog them for later perusal as opposed to the effort it would take for me to write a fully-fledged blog post or design and create some pretty things of my own is miniscule. It feels effortless, so naturally, it’s inviting.

To an extent, I suppose tumblr does inspire me. I’ve sourced some brilliant ideas for photography and design and all sorts of other creative projects from there, and I do enjoy surrounding myself with aesthetically pleasing things. But on the other hand, Tumblr has made me lazy. It has fed my procrastination, made it easier for me to waste time, and kept me hooked using these same techniques, effectively preventing me from getting anything done, creative or otherwise. Furthermore, the sheer numbers of users doing the exact same thing as me have justified my procrastination to my brain. If everyone else is doing it, then surely I can manage also. “Oh look,” I say to myself, “that person just reblogged something humourous about how they should be studying. It’s not just me.” And then I afford myself the luxury of continuing, a luxury that increasingly, I can’t afford. When school returns this year, it’s going to be tougher than it has ever been, and it’s going to require more effort from me than it ever has. I can’t afford to waste time, and Tumblr is, first and foremost, a waste of time.

Some people will be indignant, at that last comment, and it’s true that some, albeit a very select few, have the right to be. Some people actually are productive on tumblr. They produce their own stuff, and churn it out at a decent rate, and have managed not to fall prey to the trap of scrolling endlessly, slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the pretty things out there. Others, however, are deluding themselves. More often than not, “running a blog” is not entirely conducive with being productive. You go out of your way to post images in a rainbow order? Fantastic, but you’re really just excusing what is ultimately ordinary, time-wasting tumblogging. You make animated .gifs of scenes from a TV show? Potential copyright breaches aside, you’re only a little better. Despite the work you put into it, and despite the considerable skill you may or may not possess, you’re essentially only modifying the creation of someone else, and fuelling the time-wasting of others on Tumblr. Should you stop? That’s up to you. Should you take a long, hard look at how long you spend doing it, and limit yourself? Absolutely.

It took me a long time to discern the subtle difference between what I do on Tumblr, and what I do on this website. After all, ultimately, Tumblr seems to serve my purpose just as well, perhaps better, as traditional WordPress blogging does. It’s fully customisable, I can design themes there just as I do here, and it’s certainly a lot easier. For a while, I wondered if blogging as I do here is becoming a redundant thing. Perhaps, to some people, it is. However, I don’t blog so can post content on the internet, or so I can accumulate a following and become famous (although that would certainly be a perk, don’t get me wrong!). I blog because I enjoy writing, because I have opinions, and I blog here because the extra effort involved is an incentive to do a good job, to create something I’m proud of. Likewise, designing and coding my own site is something I do to extend my mind, and for enjoyment. I didn’t begin to do it because I wanted something easy, or because I wanted to pursue a career in it or become famous. I do this because I enjoy the challenge, and at the end of the day, I enjoy the result when I can look back on it and know that I made it.

I’ve done some of my best work, and been at my most productive, when I’ve ignored Tumblr. Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m resisting the temptation to open it and resume scrolling, because I’ve wasted too many hours of too many days with nothing to show for it but a couple of pictures that aren’t mine on a page filled with other things that aren’t mine and really only reflect what I want to be and do. I’ll continue to use it, of course, because I enjoy it, and because there are benefits from it, but I think from now onwards I’ll be cautious of how I view Tumblr, and I’ll limit how much time I spend on it. At the end of the day, if Tumblr disappeared from the internet tomorrow, all that I would really mourn are my connections with a few friends I follow on there, and the ability to check back to find the ideas and inspiration for the things I wanted to do but never quite got around to.