With social media and microblogging all the rage on the Internet these days, why even blog? I’m going to tell you, through one of the oldest Internet things I know of: being tagged to fill out a template.

Full disclosure: I was not actually tagged to do this, as I personally know very few people who even write in the long-form style anymore, but I found this through the IndieBlog random function (which I highly recommend using every once in a while to find other bloggers), and it seemed like a good prompt to get some thoughts out about why I occasionally put text into a screen on a computer and save it so the whole wide world can read it.

Why Did You Start Blogging in the First Place?

My earliest memory of any kind of “write something on the Internet” was a thing called LiveJournal (although its current incarnation is nothing like it was in early-to-mid-2000s). It began in 1999, but it wasn’t until someone I knew told me about it in 2001 that I decided to try it. Adding whimsical stuff to my AOL Instant Messenger client was fun, but this was a new level. I had tried some written journals in my teens, I think, but any kind of consistent journaling didn’t take root until LJ.

My first post, while not on LiveJournal anymore and now just in a hidden draft form along with 1000+ old posts that need reviewing, was just an ode to Rage Against the Machine, a band in heavy listening rotation for the budding young guiarist me at the time.

What Platform Are You Using to Manage Your Blog, and Why Did You Choose it?

My blog is currently managed by Jekyll, a Static Site Generator. There are plenty of choices when it comes to SSGs, but my fondness for Ruby (at the time, and even now) probably swayed this one for me.

Before Jekyll, I used Wordpress (and a MySQL database on a host I controlled), and before that it was all LiveJournal (in who-knows-what database on a host I did not control). I was able to export both previous systems, thankfully, so now all my 20-something musings are at least captured in flat files should I ever decide to import them properly. Controlling my content, and in a format that’s easy to move around (it’s just a bunch of files!), is really important to me now.

Creating content for the walled gardens of the world is fine, but I prefer to own mine as much as possible, and “share it with the world” in whatever way that means at the time, rather than create it in silos that can then be taken down or away without any consent or notice. See also: POSSE.

How Do You Write Your Posts?

Programming is how I make my living, and I’m a fan of VSCode, so I just make Markdown files in it. Thanks to markdownlint and Markdown Preview Enhanced I’ve got all I need.

When Do You Feel Most Inspired to Write?

Honestly? I feel most inspired when I realize I haven’t blogged in a while.

The conclusion of a project is sometimes enough to get me to write about the experience of working on said thing. However, the more likely culprit is this scenario: read through my RSS feeds, see all these other blogs being written, get a bit sad that my feed hasn’t updated in many moons, think of something to write about, write about it.

Do You Publish Immediately After Writing, or Do You Let it Simmer a Bit as a Draft?

Since I blog so infrequently, when I actually think of something to make a blog post about, it’s usually somewhat long and involved. I often take all day, poking and prodding the words, until a finished product is ready to go.

Regardless, when it’s done I usually read it over, check for obvious mistakes, maybe add links and tags, and then push it. Simmering generally not needed.

What’s Your Favorite Post on Your Blog?

Choosing a “favorite” of anything is difficult for me, so I’ll just link this C# regions rant I made 13+ years ago (please excuse the cringey title) that I actually put on Reddit (which is very rare for me) and this writeup on Axeracer, my first Pico-8 game.

Any Future Plans for Your Blog?

Using Jekyll works for me, so no change sighted on the horizon for now. All my blog content is in either HTML or Markdown files, so it’s easily exported to another system, if needed.

My content is largely going to stay the same, focusing on audio and development, but I might make the blog itself front and center instead of tucked away in a subdirectory. I also will foolishly make the goal of “blogging more”, and 01/2025 is going well so far!, but know it probably won’t last. Still, it’s going to exist as an archive of my posts in perpetuity, regardless.

Why do you write? Other Than Your Blog, Do You Write Long-Form Content Elsewhere?

I write to remember, primarily. But I also write to better understand things. When I make a blog post, it’s intentional and I try to make it interesting and accurate. Since most of my blogging these days is technical, development stuff, it takes time to formulate my thoughts and make something of substance. Social media and microblogging sites are for the quick thoughts, but my blog is for the long ones.

I’d love to blog about something and it come up in a search because someone else was also working on the thing I’m working on. I’ve found so many cool blogs by people doing what I can assume is a similar intention, so I want to be part of that.

I don’t write anything of substance anywhere else, so this is the digital extension of my brain that I hope has the best chance of becoming my legacy.

It’s Your Turn Now

So, if anyone reads this, and has their own blog, consider copying the questions and adding your own answers! I found it interesting to think about why I do this thing you’re reading, as introspection has always been enjoyable to me.