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Experiments In Blogging

Stop me if you have heard this one before, but for the last ten years I have wanted to create a blog like John Gruber’s Daring Fireball.

I am not a writer. I am not famous (internet or otherwise). I do not have unique or insightful opinions about things. Yet still I continue to want to have my own website that people willingly visit on a regular basis1.

My previously failed attempts include, but are not limited to:

  • A site based around curating Spotify playlists focusing on Canadian bands called SpotEH!fy
  • A rip-off the once-great-but-now-gone Evening Edition website, but with a focus on Canadian news called The Abridged
  • A linked-list style blog focusing on Canadian politics called One Hundred Eleven
  • A weekly review of a single album called New Music Tuesday
  • Several (as in easily more than four) attempts at this very format of original posts and linked-list posts using this URL
  • A photography website showcasing some photos I took when I masqueraded as a concert photographer
  • Another photography site showcasing more general photos I took

I came to learn that much like dating, I found the thrill of the chase more intriguing than actually running a website. These sites lasted weeks, at most. Some lasted mere days.

I started the current iteration of this site at the beginning of the year and when I inevitably abandoned it, not only did I not delete it, I actually setup a private README file for my future-self so I could just pick-up where I left-off without having to re-do the entire site.

I also have come to terms with my own limitations. A while ago I noticed that Ben Brooks setup a website to which he posted snippets of text… not quite tweets but definitely not full blog posts, and that intrigued me. In all of my failed attempts, I rarely wrote a full-length blog post but the idea of a quick quip seemed like something I could handle.

Enter Micro.blog - a microblogging/IndieWeb/feed compiler service from Manton Reece2 - that I backed on Kickstarter3 many months ago. I did not really know what it was, but it seemed like it lined up with the idea of easily posting text to the internet…. After a few weeks of fixing my RSS feeds to cross-post to Micro.blog and figuring out some iOS automations to help upload photos and make quick posts, I am actually in a position to give this a shot.

I am hoping that by having the ability to create these small pieces of content it may create a habit that will lead to creating longer pieces of content. My expectations, however, are that I will predominantly post photos and rarely write full-length blog posts. Brief text posts and linked-list posts will be somewhere in the middle. We will see how it goes…

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  1. I say that mostly sarcastically. I know it is the wrong way to approach it. I really like the idea of writing things (I say idea because I have never really given it an honest effort) and I know I should just focus on doing this just because I want to write ↩︎

  2. It should be obvious by that terrible explanation that I don’t have a solid understanding of what Micro.blog is ↩︎

  3. I previously backed App.net, so backing Micro.blog did not feel like an odd thing to do ↩︎