On Blogging
I was having a text conversation with my brother about my blog. He asked me about my thoughts were on the election, and I just shared with him my blog post that I wrote directly after I woke up after election day.
And then we started talking about why I started a blog and I found it very enlightening to articulate my thoughts on why I blog. Here is a basic rundown of our conversation.
Brother: Hey, how are you feeling about the elections?
Often: [Link to Blog Post]
Brother: I didn't know you still kept a blog? Did you switch websites?
Often: Yeah. I'm testing out to see if I like Ghost better. This is the first time that I'm trying a paid third-party host. Right now, I'm still on the 14-day trial, but so far I actually like it. Once the free trial ends, I’m probably going to purchase it for a year.
Brother: What's the CMS?
Often: Ghost.
Brother: What were you using before? And what would you say is your favorite?
Often: I've used a mix of CMS: Jekyll, Hugo, Grav, WordPress, Blogger... My favorite would be Jekyll because it’s a static flat-file, but it's a pain to set up using mobile.
Brother: I'm curious, how many people read your blog? Do you have metrics?
Often: The maximum I've ever had was 100 views on a post when I was more consistent 2 years ago. Back then, the highest weekly count was 10 visitors.
Brother: And now?
Often: None whatsoever, and I'm completely fine with that.
Brother: Why not just use a private journal then? Why post it publicly?
Often: I like the thought of having a public journal. It's just fun.
Brother: Fair enough. I guess for me, I don’t feel as transparent when I know it’s public, but to each their own.
Often: One reason I like having a public blog is it forces me to write a bit more neatly. I'd say about 1/5 of my journaling goes on the public blog, and I definitely notice the quality of my writing improves when there's a potential audience. My primary writing form is Zen writing, which I adopted from Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg.
Brother: Interesting, I'll need to look those up.
Often: Zen writing helps me with brainstorming and the rough draft phase. Having a public blog then lets me focus on revising and proofreading. And if I end up with enough posts, I could use that as material to publish a book. Using the same ratio, 1/5 of my Zen writing goes to my blog, and 1/5 of the blog might eventually become source material for a book.