You don't actually need to be good at anything to blog

30 Jun, 2025

I read Tala's "You don't need a grand life to blog" a while ago, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend: I suggested to them they should make a bearblog, but they told me their life simply wasn't interesting enough.

I'm mostly in agreement with Tala's general take, but there is one thing I don't quite agree on: You don't actually need any skills whatsoever to write what I would consider to be 'good blogposts'. You don't need attention to detail, you don't need any grand insights, and you don't even need to do any self-reflection. Obviously, all of those things are good, and if you can do them, they will make your blogposts better, but they are far from required.

Here are the three things you need to blog, in my opinion:

1. Be currently alive
2. Have an opinion about something
3. Don't write solely for likes/comments/views/insert arbitrary measure of success here

What, to me, is interesting about blogposts isn't being given some grand lessons about life, it's to have a window into the life, and into the thought process of a complete stranger. No matter who you are, your life is interesting enough for me to want to read about it. Because, no matter how similiar, or how 'boring' we all are, we all have a unique perspective on how we see things. Go ahead, write 500 words about what you had for breakfast this morning, I'll read. That's fun. That's human. Because the subject matter on its own is not important. It can elevate a post, sure. A good topic done really well can be awesome, but it's not required to write something that's fun to read.

And I'm not saying I enjoy reading literally every blogpost on bearblog discover.

• I don't read posts about how you made five bajillion dollars by switching to insert trendy framework here.
• I don't read overly technical posts about the latest AI advancements.
• I don't read 20.000 word barely-comprehensible epics that overanalyze a piece of media so hard it loses all meaning.

But, first of all, clearly all of those are things some people want to read, seeing as they hit first page trending quite often - so there's definitely people that enjoy them if that is the kind of thing you do want to write.

What I'm actually saying is, that: You don't actually need to be good at anything to write something compelling, as long as you write it earnestly. About something you actually did/experienced or you feel strongly about. And that doesn't have to be profound. At all. It can be really really stupid. I'll read that.

Here is a list of things I have written blogposts about that I really like:
Owning A ricecooker

Having to pay like 2 Euros for a bus ticket once

Talking about two kinds of frozen pizza I ate

Wanting to buy a japanese snack box but realizing the only way to do that was paying a subscription and then getting annoyed and not doing that

I won't say any of these are amazing - a fair amount of them are worse than what I write nowadays - but they are interesting, and I like reading them. Because they could only have been written by me. Just like how the posts about your life that you might write can only be written by you.

Everyone can write good, interesting blogposts. And everyone should, especially in this age where things are becoming increasingly less human thanks to AI.

If you don't have a blog, make one. Write stuff. You will not regret that.¹

If you have a blog and we haven't talked before - go ahead and send me an email! I'll read it! (Your blog, I mean. And the email. But that goes without saying.)