My 20th anniversary of blogging!

Twenty years ago today, I wrote my first blog post! (I stopped blogging from about 2009-2011, so I haven’t technically been blogging for twenty years yet — guess I get to celebrate twenty years twice 😂)

My old blogs

In the intervening years, I’ve blogged at:

• a college blog,
• a daily photo blog,
• an original art blog I ran briefly with a friend,
• a post-college blog,
• another original art blog I ran slightly longer with my sister,
• two blogs through office jobs,
• my fiction pen name,
• my ongoing Cascadia Inspired blog,
• and this site (which I call a mind garden but is basically a blog heavily focused on links).

What I’ve gotten out of blogging

Blogging — regularly writing and self-publishing in public — is one of the most rewarding things I’ve chosen to do, and I plan to keep at it for… ever. I set up shop on the web when I was seventeen and I’ve had at least one website, usually more, active ever since. Blogging has taught me to think and write better; my blog is one of my favorite tools for thinking.

Blogging gave me an outlet for creativity during my early writing and drawing years, when everything I made was pretty rough; having a place to publish pushed me to write and draw and photograph more than I might have otherwise. I find it hard to do things without purpose — tutorials really don’t work for me because I’d rather figure out how to do things in the pursuit of making something I want to make, even if it’s harder to learn out of order — so having a place to publish made me want to make things worth publishing.

I’ve seen others blog about how publicly publishing isn’t that important to them, but it’s been valuable to me. In the past I struggled with self confidence and taking up space and feeling unheard — but the Internet is somewhere I always felt there was room for me. A personal website granted me permission to share what I made, since that was what everyone else was doing with their websites; joining a culture with self-publishing as an established norm was huge. Knowing my words are out there for others, whether or not anyone reads them, makes me feel like I’m part of the online community.

As social media collapses, a blogging renaissance?

I think we could be at the start of a blogging renaissance. Social media is crumbling — it’s not fun anymore, and no one place is where everyone is anymore. As people pull away from dying platforms, they will create or fall into new reading and posting habits. Many are mired in the autopilot morass of consumption, but as they are forced to consider what they actually want out of social media so they can choose where to go next, I’m betting a fair few will seize their opportunity to flee a toxic relationship.

Some people will find new spaces on BlueSky or Mastodon or Discord servers, but others may seek something quieter. People are recognizing that social media plays to shallowness and ever-shortening hype cycles, which the real-time speed of these alternatives might still reward. Personally, I’m not looking for somewhere to hang out all day, but to listen to what interesting, thoughtful, creative people are thinking about; blogs and newsletters are where folks have room to go deep.

Blogs provide a different kind — a different pace — of community than social media. It’s great to have a place to hang out together, but not everyone wants to go to the bar every night or share an open work space with a bunch of talkative colleagues. A better analogue for blogs might be a monthly club or lecture series; not everyone comes to every meeting, not everyone participates in every meeting, but they still become part of the group. When we read each others’ blogs, we’re not cubicle buddies — we do our work on our own — but we do share it with each other when we’re ready.

Mandy Brown recently wrote about the difference between how writers and talkers approach problems, which I find has some resonance with online communication preferences; some of us don’t like to be put on the spot, but need more time to think things through. More quiet. People who haven’t been enjoying social media might find a better fit for themselves in the blogosphere.

A blog is a much nicer place to publish than social media, sparking fewer but more meaningful interactions. Blogging allows writers a more forgiving pace with slower conversation. On their blog, people can be themselves instead of playing to an audience and feeling judged — a place to escape the pressures of one-upmanship and signaling, the noise of the ever-demanding attention economy, and the stress of hustle culture.

People are looking for other people, not performances of personas, and a personal blog is a more likely place to find that than social media these days. A Twitter quip takes a particular skill to write, but most people can’t say much of substance in a single sentence. Some folks disparage the classic blog ramble, but that can be a feature — yes, I do want to read Cat Valente ranting for 2000 words about capitalism actually thank you very much. Brevity has its place, but asides and conversational style and inconclusive ponderings all have their value too. At the very least, they feel like they are written by humans for other humans, instead of by influencers for the algorithm or sponsors.

So send your friends the blog posts that make you think of them — remind them that the corporate web of social media silos isn’t the only way to be online — show them there are still people blogging. Help more people make the leap to a people-centered internet.

Also posted on IndieNews