✿ reasons to blog

i am currently listening to how the plains left me flat by flotation toy warning

• every word when you blog, no matter how throwaway, is a beautiful ode and capsule to the life you live. it's magical that what once was private and precious can be shared intimately and still be precious. i love it when i read viscerally raw and honest things about this world, even if naive or childish — i love documented encounters of struggle, introspection, renewal, mundane, feelings. writing about the small to large  a casual blog entry is as important as the text in a novel
• that is, when i see someone articulate, even in passing, a 'naive' feeling or a thought i had when going through life it feels far less lonely. sometimes i write and lament that no one has ever felt this way and realize that this is so far from the truth, that there are others who appreciate my line of thinking and want to feel it out with me.
• knowing how you felt and judged a moment is going to be harder and harder the farther you've departed from it, so blog and stay a while
  
  
• blogging as self-preservation. 
  blogging preserves a feeling, thought, idea, or any other form of entry in a space of your own making. if you 'publish' it in some form, it might offer you a mode of legitimizing the thought. a post is always changeable and can flicker between whatever you decide is worth sharing versus 'a draft' (though i would challenge those conventions too, i often like to write blog posts 'in public'). say you even keep everything in the drafts. most blogging platforms allow you to revisit different versions of your piece, as any good writing platform allows, and that is also a rich act of self-preservation – what was your writing process like? what did the different 'published' versions of your writing look like? and when you blog, do you trust that it will be there years later?
  
  
• wonder "who will the author be? and what will he write?". when i asked what people were interested in discussing re: blogs, brian left this wonderful thought. worry less about audience and the 'worth' of publishing something – blogging is an act for yourself. you can assume different identities, objectives, and selves at any moment. which one will you take?
  
  
• your own platform, your own world. why blog instead of writing for a bigger magazine or newspaper? not talking about the big newspapers – even a smaller journal might be intimidating. why not join an existing platform or institution? for one, you might just want to blog and share. an existing space might not fit the mood and process you would like to have on your own space. maybe it's also about distribution – the vibe might not be to have millions read your entry, or you wouldn't like to have someone else edit over your words or have a deadline (though you can definitely impose that for your own personal blog if you'd like too). on your own self-published platform, you own the rules and modes for distribution.
  
  
• "the world is understood through narrative. all meaning comes to us as stories. we can take control of these stories to create our own meaning and form new myths. fragments of stories and half-remembered truths form constantly rewritten histories and articulate new and possible futures." gavin wade
  
  
• and it doesn't have to contain fully-fleshed texts. some of my favorite blogs primarily work around photo or even sound. a journal can contain logs, receipts, sketches, one-liners, messy videos, digicam photo dumps, shots of movies and things youve liked that you yourself didnt necessarily make, playlists, shopping lists, etc – it's as simple as pulling up your phone and selecting snippets from your camera roll and voice memos and writing a few words. putting together mixed media reels is so fun. all these little clippings speak to life, after all
  
  
• it's nice to have a blank slate. as opposed to a long feed and a wall of other content you might begin comparing yourself to as much as you try not to, as opposed to a place with defined conventions that will have you start worrying about how much you post and when you post and what is in what you post... how often do you see a blank slate or page? what does it offer you? how might you lean into it?

other notes on blogging

1. a blog doesn't ever have to be finished
2. a blog doesn't only have to contain your own words
3. a blog can be ephemeral, you can have several blogs, you can kill many blogs at any time, you can revive it at any time
4. a blog doesn't have to be consistent – never let this stop you
5. a blog doesn't have to have any expectations
6. a blog doesn't have to be chronological - what if you arrange blogs by topic and continuously edit the post? or your setup is 1-3 posts that you persistently make?
7. a blog doesn't have to be for anyone but yourself, even if it lives publicly – blogging for yourself tends to be the most authentic way to connect to others, anyway
   
   

prompts for blogs

• a blog that contains every note app entry that is at least 6 months old (so it won't ever be a revealing one you use all the time; might be weird throwaway one-offs)
• a blog written for a very specific audience, like a certain group of friends
• a blog for a specific interest, like your progression through a videogame/show or documenting birding trips or travel or the playlists you've curated (because the spotify description is not enough!). have several blogs for different interests.
• a blog that is the digital version of a physical notebook/sketchbook you have. simply mirror everything onto it by scanning/taking photos of it and (in probably very delayed fashion) put it on your blog
• a blog that contains longer form thoughts that you can link to under tweets/posts
• a blog that substitutes or complements an existing specific-use account on another platform, like a blog for logging cloud pics or to have longform thoughts to add to your fan account or getting off letterboxd because you don't like the social features / community too much and writing all your reviews there instead.

on privacy

comes two-fold,

1. in how you write: what is in the content you share? some people openly recount their days, say the names of their friends, talk deeply about what happens in their personal life and what they think about. you can be as ambiguous as you'd like, assume a pen name in your writing, publish a piece long after it has happened, write about your life non-chronologically. be cautious in how much you'd like to share, even if the audience in a blog might be more intimate, which brings me to...
   
   
2. in who you share it to. in the way we have (some) control over how to gate our social media accounts (like how we have close friends stories and finstas and an even deeper close friends story on the finsta), there are many ways to think about how to gate audience with blogs. you can make a password-protected blog (share it with friends, give it out randomly) or never directly link to it – public but hidden adds a dimension of friction that i find is sufficient for lots of the writing i share (i want people to be sufficiently invested enough in me to read it). less common, you can completely make your blog hidden except to select readers by giving your friends a specific login tied to their email (as opposed to a password that might be passed around) on certain platforms, like invite-only blogs on blogger or ones you can only read if you follow the other person like on tumblr. this isn't of course foolproof, but adds so much friction that it might as well be locked with a little plastic key. 
   
   the audience of a blog is also inherently interesting because, unlike a newsletter or social media feed, one has to intentionally click to or type your URL to get to your blog. they won't know when there's something new unless you say it (i rarely share when i have a new piece of writing) or unless they have RSS set up (more on that later). while some blogging platforms have likes/follower counts/etc you can also blog without these engagement markers at all – that invisibility is kind of wonderful. i turn off my wordpress view counters but do track them, and maybe look at them once every two years and am blown away by the amount of people who silently consume things. with the way you write, you might also be more welcoming to people who engage: and how do they engage, are they compelled to email you or dm you or comment right below your post? 
   
   you can play with this idea more too. what if the page whites out if more than x people looked at it each day? what if there was a queue to read your blog? what if your blog was only open to the public for a few days a week? you can use some real-world gating mechanisms or come up with your own.
   

what are your own thoughts?