I can't help but shake the feeling that everything I do and say here will be ephemeral. The fact that everything is hosted on an instance, run by either a person or a handful of people means that once the instance is no longer properly maintained, my contributions are either gone or trapped here.

Granted, I know that I can forward things like my followers to a new account on a new instance, but it still feels incredibly messy in terms of a long-term social solution.

I originally started using Facebook as my social network of choice because I knew it'd be around in the long term. I used it as a sort of public diary that helped me not only log my life as it happened, but also keep up with friends along the way. I (mostly) moved to Twitter when I realized how terrible Facebook was becoming, and it was a pretty easy drop-in replacement.

I don't really see Mastodon filling that need any time soon (although I hope to be proven wrong). But it's why I'm considering scaling back my social presence and using a private journal for this sort of thing instead. The reason I haven't already started is because it'd be difficult to let go of the social aspect of all of this. I keep up with a lot of friends this way, sometimes exclusively. So it's going to be a struggle for me to pick a single solution going forward.