I’ve had this pull for a few years now to get back to regular blogging. Not writing high-authority content to drive clicks through SEO or sell products and services, but just online documentation about what I’m working on, reading, thinking, etc.
My first exposure to blogging was probably around 2002. I was in my grade 10 comm tech class, which had a bunch of super old school (even for that time) recording equipment and computer software. We would learn things like audio video recording and editing, drafting on Autocad, etc. One of my classmates was using the computer to sell items on eBay, and he would blog about his business ventures at the same time.
Over the next few years, I would follow the journey of a few bloggers who were able to use their platform to turn their hobby into full-time businesses. I started a few different blogs over the years. Nothing I stuck with long term. Consistency isn’t my strength.
But I think the desire to go back to this era of blogging happened when I watched the movie Julie & Julia, a film about a blogger in the early 2000’s who wrote about trying out each one of Julia Child’s recipes on her own website. The movie created a sense of nostalgia for me. I wanted to go back to that time, but with what I know now, to capture some of the magic of randomly connecting with strangers on the internet and becoming friends with them.
I remember sitting in a cafe with a new friend about 2 years ago, telling her that I wanted to start blogging again. At that time, it had already been something rolling around in my brain. She encouraged me to go for it, but I had many reasons why it wasn’t the right time.
In my head, this had to be something I did a lot of work for – create a new brand for my business, then rework this website to be my personal brand site, etc. But that’s never been the priority for me because I have so many other things that I ‘need’ to do for my life and business, so I’ve put it off.
But that was perfection getting in the way. All I really needed to do was to create a new category for my posts, call it ‘blog’, and start writing.
There have been a few things that have led me to wanting to blog again, but if I’m being 100% honest, I was listening to Russell Brunson’s audiobook Expert Secrets this morning, and he talked about starting his podcast in his car on the way to work, and it reminded me that sometimes it’s better to just do the thing than to let perfection get in the way.
He talked about documenting your journey instead of trying to create, and that really landed with me because we live in a world where people call their job title ‘Content Creator’, but while I want to publish content, the idea of constantly having to create on a never ending hampster wheel does not sound like something I want to sign up for.
Let me back up and explain part of why I’m doing this.
1. I think blogs are a form of owned media, meaning I own it – not a social media platform. Social media is great for getting in front of new people, but it means you have to play by there rules. I actually really miss the days of RSS readers, prior to email lists, when you could subscribe to people’s blogs and follow along with their posts sort of like your own social algorithm. And while most websites these days have comments turned off, I actually see people moving back to this sort of blogging in the near future (maybe – just a hunch).
2. With the advent of AI and LLMs, the thing that is winning in terms of content these days are real peoples stories, because an LLM can only create based on inputs – in other words, it creates based on past work. By documenting my own journey in my own words, I’m leaning into what makes me human (which is what I believe makes me valuable).
3. I’ve been wanting to strengthen my storytelling ability. I’ve done a lot of writing over the years, and I regularly journal, write, content, emails, documents. But storytelling is a skill that I haven’t practiced as much. I think by blogging in the old-school early 2000’s way – where I just randomly explain what I’m working on and thinking about in posts – I’ll naturally improve my storytelling abilities and writing in general.
So here I am – writing a blog post about writing a blog post.
I’m committing to the fact that the writing might not be good in the beginning, but over time, hopefully it gets a bit better. Some posts might be super short, others long. All written by me (not an LLM).
If you can’t tell, these posts will likely be a little more rough, raw, not edited into a clean final product. This is because I see this as a practice ground for me to improve my thinking through writing. It’s more for me than for you in this moment.
But my hope is that over time, as I share what I’m up to and what I’m working on and what I’m learning, I’ll be able to weave some of the threads together to create something worth reading.
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