Since taking blogging a bit more serious a few years ago, I’ve had the opportunity to meet some truly wonderful people. This is a short ode to blogging. It might spark others to start writing for themselves too. There are lots of “you should really start your own blog” posts out there, but that’s not what I’d like to accomplish. Instead, I’d like to simply show you.
By blogging, I rediscovered my interest in web development. That led me into redesigning everything from scratch. That taught me about web accessibility. That led me to Laura Kalbag and Aral Balkan and their Small Technology Foundation which I ended up supporting. That led me into slow tech and privacy. That led me into alternative Android OSes and de-Googling my life. It even made me rethink how I spent my money.
By blogging, I learned about the Fediverse and installed my own Mastodon-like instance. There, I met Ton Zijlstra, which introduced me to Peter Rukavina. Thanks to Peter, I somehow find myself to be a member of The Pen & Pencil Club of Prince Edward Island, although I’ve never set foot in Canada. Peter was even kind enough to mail me the membership card he pressed himself:
By blogging, I slowly started connecting with fellow nerd bloggers such as Ruben Schade and Peter Bridger. Peter’s off the charts retro gaming enthusiasm pointed me towards Retro Tea Breaks. Which cause me to buy an Evercade. I love the long and relaxed e-mail conversations we’re having—which is helping me a lot to get through these lonely times. The few lovely retro-related comments I’ve received led me towards BBsing and leaving messages on strangers' ZX Spectrums. I even revived my own retro gaming weblog.
By clicking around in Ton’s blog and his connections, I discovered the IndieWeb movement—and somehow even stumbled into a Dutch Obsidian meetup, thanks Ton! That caused me to Indiewebify my own site. Which caused me to learn more about technical quirks of the latest JavaScript standard. Which cause me to deep dive into the Go programming language. That led me to a bunch of interesting sites to subscribe to through RSS and write my own Webmention sender and receiver. Which pointed back towards slow tech and the Gemini protocol.
By blogging, I started rethinking how I gather and process information through my journals. The Obsidian meetup peaked my interest in Luhman’s Zettelkasten method. Which led me to more books about note-taking. Which fundamentally changed the way I do my own academic research—including the contents of it.
By blogging, I try to spread the word, like how to write books and academic papers in Markdown, which ended up being used by other writers. Some articles resulted in feedback, which resulted in more learning and improvements.
A triumph for blogging indeed!
