I'm taking a different, more measured approach to how I blog these days. I thought it would be good to jot these thoughts down here, mostly for me but also for anyone who is on the fence about starting a blog.
I've been posting my thoughts online in various formats for close to 20 years now. Blogs, tumblelogs, tweets, photos blogs have all come on gone over the years. My blogs themselves have changed through time, both in writing frequency and topical choices. My early days were all about being online and a part of this amazing web that was, and still is, shaping itself. I've always been drawn to online publishing. Excited by the idea that anyone can get their ideas out to be read/seen/heard by anyone across the Earth. It still excites me today!
There was a period several years back where I just stopped writing publicly. Blogs, tweets, anything. I kept the occasional Instagram post going because that felt easy enough. I stopped mostly because I got to a point where I felt I was just more noise in an already noisy world. I didn't feel like I had anything worthwhile to add to the world with my words. This was wrong. Looking back, I probably had more to say then than I do even now. It was also wrong because my worth isn't defined by what I write, or what people may think about what I write. There were other factors involved in this "silent period" that I went through, which may be a topic worth writing about one day.
Earlier this year I had the urge to start tinkering with a new website for myself. It started out as just a way to dust off my web design skills, which had been languishing for several years. It renewed the sense of joy I get when designing and building a site. Pouring over details like font choice, the structure of my CMS, learning Tailwind; this all just got fun again. I missed the feeling and it's been enjoyable to tackle things anew.
But this time I decided to do things my own way and at my own pace. I've not told one person that I started blogging again. I've not pushed any of my posts to social media, and I just recently added RSS feeds here. Sure, there's a part of me that wants to share my thoughts out with the world again, but I want to be happy with what I'm doing here on my own terms first.
So now I write here when the mood strikes. I tinker with post types, post formatting, font choices, RSS feed tweaks. Knowing full well that I am basically the only person seeing any of this. In a way it feels like a personal journal that just happens to be publicly visible should anyone stumble upon it. I write what I want to write, not what I think people may want to read. It's refreshing and freeing to do this.
I am also spending time following other people's blogs. I've started curating my RSS reader to be more blog focused. I like seeing the normality of life written by people outside my own normality. Reading Ben Werdmuller's short posts about his newborn son, or Peter Rakuvina's posts about returning a sofa they didn't care for, or Alan's posts on coding and his beautiful Arizona sunrises.
More blogging please. More from me, more from you.
Side note: I like including images with my blog posts. It's a designy thing for me. I dislike plain text pages, so I spend time looking for images to pair with my posts. As noted above, some people may find that silly, but it's my choice and my blog.