blogging about blogging
I've seen a lot of 'meta' posts on here talking about blogging. And while yes, I'm essentially beating a dead horse at this point, I can't really relate to most of them, so i feel like I have something to add here. Besides, At this point I've practically achieved a masters degree in posthumous equine close-combat anyways.1
What mainly inspired this post was reading Emily Barwick's Website Manifesto and finding it interesting how her approach was basically the polar opposite to mine.2
A lot of the "rules" in her Manifesto are either about actively trying to be authentic or about using her blog as a platform to help people.
What I found particularly interesting was these two lines from her post.
"I want to avoid nicheifying myself and my work"
"I do NOT want to be a brand"
Because despite purposefully not trying to be a brand, it does kind of read as if she sees herself as one to some extent. You can't nicheify yourself if you don't care about your brand. You can't nicheify a person.3
I think the main difference for me, and the reason why I don't really relate to any of the posts in this vein is the reason i started in the first place - I didn't actually start blogging to share my thoughts with people. I didn't see it as a form of social media, and i still don't really do now. The reason I started blogging was so I could read more blogposts.
Let me explain: I was doing an Internship where I had absolutely nothing to do for 90% of the time I spent there, so I had to find something to keep me occupied. I also didn't have a SIM Card at the time, so i had no Internet. I started keeping a diary in the hopes of writing enough entries that I would eventually forget the first few I wrote so I could re-read them for entertainment. Yes, really. I know, in retrospect it probably wasn't the most efficient way of solving that issue lol. Anyways, that's how I started out. ...And that diary was what eventually became my blog. I still saw it as a diary, something I wrote in with the expectation of it never being read by anyone. Of course, i knew that it was still theoretically possible for someone to do so, so I never disclosed any personally identifiable information. But yeah, that's still how I treat this place - As somewhere for me to look back on at some point, an open diary. My target audience is mainly just future me. Yes, I do a lot of response posts and write things with an audience in mind, but that's mainly because I enjoy reading that. I wrote the same way back when I was writing in my actual diary.
And it works for me. I probably spend more time re-reading my posts than I do writing, as stupid as that might sound. But I just like the stuff I write. And that's, I think, the main reason why I'm not really as worried about the reception of it compared to a lot of other bloggers. Obiously I do still care, it's always great to see people engaging with the things I write4, and I do definitely get a lot of enjoyment out of having people interact with my stuff, but the main reason I write is so that I can read more of my blogposts. I know that might sound a bit narcissistic, but I would have probably stopped by now if i didn't enjoy reading them.5
I've done like, what, three separate blog posts about AI destroying creativity? Honestly, I'm probably going to make a fourth one and you can't stop me >:3↩
Just to be clear, I don't think either of us is wrong, we just do stuff differently. Though I doubt she even knows I exist lol↩
I'm not intending this to be some sort of gotcha or whatever. The main reason I'm pointing this detail out is just because this train of thought was the thing that led me to realizing why exactly I write blogposts.↩
Even if the response is a callout post lol. I must confess, my first reaction to hearing "Sorry if my reply came off in the same vein as Kami's" was being genuinely happy at the fact that someone read my blogpost and was talking about it xd↩
I know this whole thing probably comes of as pretty self-congratulatory, but I don't think what I do is any better then what someone like Emily is doing. Honestly, she probably has the moral high ground on me in that regard, considering one of the main points in her Manifesto is wanting to help others through her blogposts.↩