Blogs. The curated, written looking glass into someone’s perspective. That’s what I love about them. Blogs. Waking up in the morning and spending a little time reading over the carefully chosen words of another human being. Truly astounding. Blogs. Poured time and energy, someone distilling themselves into this personal, sharable medium. Blogs.
…
I guess to bring this post to an end… if you don’t have a blog, change that! (especially if I know you IRL, seriously). I wanna hear about you and your life! Start that quirky and personalised website. If you already do, tell me and share! Every one of them is awesome; from digital gardens to byte-based megacities. Fill them with you and share! I can’t wait to start reading :)
Oh, so very much this.
There was a time, a couple of decades and change ago, when almost all of the people I spent time with in my real life blogged. Nowadays, it’s far fewer. Ruth shares interesting bits of tech (plus Thames Path walks!), and I keep an eye out in case Gareth shares more ‘plane-related news or Andy takes a deeper dive into his music… but nowadays the active blogs I follow are, for the most part, people I know online (or, at least, people I knew online first, even if I’ve subsequently met them in person).
That’s not bad. I like meeting people online. And increasingly, the smallweb’s becoming better-interconnected and less-lonely than ever.
Daniel really puts it well:
Blogs allow for a deeper level of thought; not everything is well suited to an in-person chat. We sometimes need time to get our thoughts in order and detailed concepts are often much better understood in writing. It’s honestly a shame that we have confined ourself to short processing times and quick responses. A back and forth can sure be fun, but so can the meticulous; and nothing’s stopping you from chatting over the stuff you’ve written – imagine how insightful that could? Blogging really recaptures that “handwritten letter” spark.
Getting updates from people over text is kinda hard too. While I’ve been abroad, I have missed so many moments in peoples lives (good and bad), of which I usually only hear a summarised fraction. I get it though, asking is hard and responding is even harder; retyping a shortened version of something for the 5th time isn’t much fun. I dream of a time where more of my friends write blogs, a world where I can easily grasp and know the wheres and whats in someone’s life without feeling like I am nagging for details; where the focus is being a friendly part of their lives…
I don’t expect this repost to encourage any of my IRL friends to dust off their old blogs (or start new ones). But I can dream!
But I get to have new friends that I’ve met through the blogs
Yeah, I love that I get to make new friends through blogs.
But just sometimes I miss somebody-I’ve-met-in-person writing something.
Maybe I need to make more effort to meet online friends in person!
Hey, Daniel here! Thanks for writing up your own thoughts. I missed out on the world where people having a blog was the norm, which is such a real shame. Sweet that you linked a few blogs from real people, I hope to one day be able to do that.
> But I can dream!
I can dream too :)
I really like the point about blogs giving people more room to develop an idea instead of reducing everything to short updates. Personal sites also make the web feel much more varied because each one can have its own voice, layout and focus. It would be great to see more people return to that kind of independent publishing.