add new material to or regularly update a blog: it's about a week since I last blogged.
– New Oxford American Dictionary
Seems straightforward in theory, but as clearly demonstrated by the very specimen you are currently reading, it is far from it.
I've been pushing myself to read more blogs in the past months, and although I haven't yet formed any sort of routine around it, I have found the experience very enlightening in one surprising way: each person's blog is truly unique.
I have always had this impression I could never make a good blogger. As I stumble across different people's posts through aggregators and social media, they all seem so focused and, most importantly, prolific.
I could never write like that, I would often say to myself.
But then one thing happened:
Time.
And by this I don't intend to imply age automatically brings any wisdom or depth. As regularly exemplified by our favorite man-child zillionaire, far from it.
But you do get to notice a lot of stuff just by merely… being alive. And online. And reading.
What I realized reading more blog posts is that… I've been blogging this whole time, just not on my blog. Many people use their blogs to share links to things they found online, to share something that happened to them, a photo, etc.
And the realization – which came almost as an epiphany – was that I've been using social media for these things this whole time.
Now, experienced readers may be shaking their heads at this very moment and quietly murmuring under their breath…
it's called micro-blogging for a reason, you idiot
And you'd be right! It was there the whole time. But I think the core of this epiphany is the realization I had never given those tweets (then) and toots (now) any deep thought – err… except maybe on how memetic they'd be, fine, I grant you that.
And the inevitable conclusion from that epiphany was that I had this assumption that blog posts needed any deep thought to begin with. As if they're all essays waiting to be graded by the collective netizenry. (We all know this isn't that far from the truth though.)
Which is why the only blog post I ever wrote which survived all the iterations of this website is a (now outdated) tutorial.
But the fact is, none of it matters. None of the blogs really matter. Yes, not even Gruber's. That's not why they exist. They exist because humans are prolific blabbers, and because we can only babble to our peers for so long before they tell us to shut-up.
So babble away. In an age where the internet is already choking with AI-generated crap it's never mattered more (or less, depending on your leanings in life.)
And to finish this very babble, as @mia@front-end.social recently tooted:
You're allowed to post on your blog once every decade, and you don't even need to apologize for it. That's also part of having your own space.
Personal sites aren't a competition, and productivity doesn't have to be a metric.
This is my own space, and I'll babble blog to my liking.
Now does that mean I'll post here more often? We'll see. Check back in another 6 years.
– Bruno