Excursions

There are two writers within me. One wants me to write as freely and as frequently as possible, blurting out everything that comes to my mind. The other wants me to weigh each word, think deeply, and post only when I have something meaningful to say. Every time they fight, which they do often, my writing stops. I am going through one such phase.

I have enjoyed writing at Scribbles recently – you can follow these posts through the RSS feed. The simplicity of the posting workflow has me hooked. The biggest draw for me is that I can easily begin a draft and expand it with more thoughts across multiple sittings. It’s a lot more frictionless than what I have found anywhere recently. The interface suits the kind of posts I am inclined to write these days - blogging regularly about life and writing.

I am sure the platform won’t work for all. There’s no support for theming. No automatic cross-posting. No markdown. Micro posts don’t sit well on the platform, either. For all that, there’s no better platform than Micro.blog. Scribbles, on the other hand, strips the blogging to the bare. To what matters: writing blog posts. And for that, the platform does enough.

So, keep an eye on Scribbles. It will launch soon to be available for sign-ups.

Exactly a month ago, I decided to stop syndicating my posts to any social networks. What have I learnt in this month?

The interactions on my posts have significantly gone down. Every post had some replies earlier. No surprise, most were on Micro.blog. A few were on Mastodon. Both have naturally gone down to zero. I have received a few emails (and fewer comments through Commento). I responded to each of them, which is something I cannot say about the earlier replies I received on the timelines. My genuine lack of interest in checking my mentions and responding to them was why I had stopped syndication.

How about traffic (yuck!)? I have no clue. Though I have analytics enabled with Tinylytics, I don’t follow the numbers. I don’t know what the numbers were earlier and how they have been impacted. There is also a possibility that most follow my blog through RSS. Whatever the case, I don’t know, and I don’t have any interest in finding out.

The most noticeable impact has been on my writing – I have stopped writing for a timeline.

Earlier, I subconsciously filtered all my posts through the lens of how they would look on a timeline. Or to the folks who tend to reply to my posts frequently. Is this too long? Too short? Does this interest all? Or some? Or anyone at all? My mind was always crowded with such unnecessary doubts. I observed this behaviour first a couple of years ago.

Writing publicly, with the voice of your readers chirping at the back of your mind, is ineffective. You write for interaction – that’s futile. Most social media posts belong to this category. You are reined back by the voice — you write for someone else. The response you expect from them, your readers, provides you the lead. You write not what you like, you write what you think your reader likes.

I even mentioned people through their social media handles in my posts. Futile, I agree. But the whole experience felt unnecessarily limiting, and I lacked the control to not let it feel.

What does all of this mean for my no-syndication experiment? As of now, nothing has changed. I like this unshackled feeling while I write. As if no one’s watching and weighing up my every word.

How about taking my writing to the readers? I am yet to find an organic way to do that. Automatic and passive syndication is not that.

I haven’t posted anything since I last wondered “why I even write anymore in public”. This question still crowds my mind. But I read what other folks write, which, in turn, makes me want to do that. So, I am not going to stop writing on my blog anytime soon.

What do I write about? Well, about nothing and everything. That has been my mantra.

I usually do not have a set template for my posts. I start writing, and the thoughts pour themselves out. The only thing I have to do is sit down at my desk and start hammering on my keyboard.

Recently, I read some excellent posts on blogging versus social media. The first is Robb Knight talking about how the web is fantastic. This feeling resonated with my current state of mind.

Blogs and RSS never died. Some of us just took a little break from it while we all shitposted on Twitter for likes, retweets, and validation. While we wrote long, unfindable threads instead of blog posts. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.

It’s been some time now since I posted to any social network. 20 days to be exact. It’s freeing to not worry about how my posts look on different timelines or how people react to them. I write on and for my blog. I have also accepted that I won’t get any reaction on even my most thoughtful posts.

I have yet to find a frictionless way to respond to a post I read. I want that.

The second post is Chris McLeod vouching for the resurgence of blogging.

[S]tumbling into such a trove of active blogs has enthused me about blogging as a medium again. It’s sparked a thought that through a combination of increased blogging activity, declining platforms, and increasing adoption of open standards to glue everything together, that maybe — just maybe — we can swing the web back towards the blog again.

I share Chris’s optimism – posting micro thoughts on social media led to the discovery of many good bloggers. I maintain my apprehensions about micro posts on the blog – I cannot write and post them. But I am okay with others doing it.

Anyway, I continue to read blogs through RSS. I continue to write on my blog. All’s well.

I wish every blog post had a footer with easy ways to respond, preferably via email. The early days of blogging were simple, with a plain comments section. All one had to do was add details about themselves and comment. Spam ruined the simplicity, and accounts were required to be created just to add a comment.

I yearn for those simpler days. I recently added a way to comment below my posts, powered by Commento. The simplicity of this system does have a price associated with it. But I want to keep that option around since I stopped syndicating posts to the social timelines.

Plus, the readers can always respond via email. I am relieved to see responses received through both of these mediums.

At the same time, it pains me when I open a blog post looking for a way to respond, and I can’t find any. Even if there is one, it is generally via some social network, which I am not keen to participate in. Please have a link to respond via email. Someday, you will receive a thoughtful response that will warm your heart.

Interactions are beautiful. Try them!

I customized the last bit of my blog theme that I hadn’t yet. RSS and JSON feeds. Could I have broken something somewhere? I am sure I could have. Do I know what that is? No clue. So I have my fingers crossed – if there’s anything that’s broken, I will find out soon or hopefully hear about it.

For the past few years, Micro.blog has hosted this blog. Every year, I revisit that decision to verify if it still is the best choice for me. I did that last year. And I did the year before. Every time, I have decided to stick to this wonderful platform. Unlike earlier, when I made such decisions by listing pros and cons, the last two times I made it based on my experience of using the other services over a year.

I have recently read a lot of people revisiting their choices of platforms and thought I should share about my experiments. I had shared my views once in 2022. This post is for the experiments since then.

Before that, here’s a quick note on how I give myself time to arrive at this decision. I have never changed my primary platform. I sign up for an annual plan with a service, set it on a custom sub-domain and use it for a full year. Sure, it’s a costly option. But as the subscription ends, I have no doubts about my decision. Neither do I have any urge to switch platforms every time I see it discussed. Anyway, onto my experiments.

In 2022, I was fascinated by what Ghost promised as a platform. It was well-reviewed, polished and highly recommended. It suited the long-form style of writing I wanted to do more of. It had a built-in newsletter. I wanted all of that. The question was, can it become my primary blogging platform. A year of continuous usage convinced me it wasn’t. Though I liked what it offered, it didn’t fit my style of writing. I am very informal in what I write. Sometimes, it is heartfelt life stories. Other times, it’s meaningless updates. More often, it’s the latter. Ghost isn’t a right fit for such posts.

For starters, it continues to need a title. And images. It wants me to play around with the metadata of the post. Before I can publish a post, all the bells and whistles distract me and I start to question if my words are worth all this polish. That’s not the feeling I want when I am about to click publish. It limits what I can do with the styling. Even the paid plan has a very limited selection of themes. Plus even with all these limitations, it is pricey. I do not earn from my blog – so $9 per month paid annually isn’t cheap.

Last year I picked up Write.as to experiment with. Unlike Ghost, its plans are simple – so I again signed up for an annual plan which unlocks all the paid features. Most importantly custom domain. I set it up as a place for my quick, unformed thoughts. It supports both short and long posts well. Plus it has got hands-down the best editor to write posts in. I could never write quick, short posts – it was that good.

But there are significant downsides that I cannot brush aside. Adding images to posts isn’t easy – need to go to a separate place to do that. The published posts look clean, but soulless. The options for styling are extremely limited. An ability to extend the capabilities is almost non-existent. The selection of good themes is negligible. The biggest problem of all is the publishing workflow, especially writing drafts, which is very frustrating. Drafts are posts published anonymously. But publishing them back to the main blog isn’t intuitive. The published dates get all messed up.

Also, I am not sure if the platform is in active development. Over the past year, I hardly saw anything change. I don’t want to spend time on a platform that’s ignored.

On both occasions, I cancelled my plan at the end of the subscription period and moved all the posts to Micro.blog. With redirects set automatically, it was as if the posts were always published here. I respect Manton for being always supportive and for actively discouraging lock-in by simplifying moving in to or out of Micro.blog.

Here’s what I had written last time while talking about why Micro.blog works for me.

[I]t suits well for both the micro and long-form posts. It has apps for all platforms that I primarily use Mac and Android. Quick notes are best made with the apps, especially so from smartphone. For posts that are long, titled, Ulysses iA Writer works perfectly well for me. No other CMS can ever work as well as a native application.

The platform is built on Hugo. And I love Hugo. (…) Building extensions in your templates is so easy, and I have gotten comfortable with it. Manton has added just enough around Hugo to make it even more useful — the APIs, the apps, the social aspects, the open plug-in and theming systems and, the most valuable, its community.

Do I use all of them [smart features]? Of course, not. But the fact that one plan provides me so much over and above the basic blogging functionality is priceless for me.

None of this has changed even now. I also haven’t observed the stability issues that I see people complain about recently. May be I have just been lucky.

No surprise then, that Micro.blog continues to be my blogging platform of choice.

I will no longer syndicate my posts to any social network timelines, that includes Micro.blog. This is the last post that gets syndicated. I will follow all my friends only via RSS and interact through emails or native comments. If you are keen to know what I am up to, you can follow the RSS feed.

For some time now, I haven’t been active on any social timelines. I simply can’t keep up. It doesn’t serve the purpose if I don’t contribute to the network and interact. At times, days go by before I respond to the mentions I receive and worse, I hardly ever reply to others' posts. Being passively around the timeline only adds to the subconscious burden.

I also want to minimise distractions with my presence on the internet to lend myself more chances to build the right routines. Anything and everything that causes even a hint of friction has to be out. Given my general lack of patience for the hustle of social networks, they had to be out the door first.

I want to simplify everything. The tools I use. What I read. The way I write. Simple, that’s my word for the year.

After deliberating over whether to offer membership for my online creations, I decided to set up a single One a Month tier. The decision to set up a membership of any form was triggered by the recent realisation that led me to pull down Scribe- the realisation that my side projects cost me dear. Every month, the prices add up, and I eventually run out of motivation to keep going.

However, the step to keep it simple and affordable for people considering support is inspired by a recent post by Manu where he proposed changing the defaults on pricing the support.

The 1$ part means you can set it up and forget about it because it’s a low enough amount that won’t make too much of a difference for the majority of people who are considering supporting online creators.

For a period now, I have had a Buy Me a Coffee page so that others can support my hobby projects. Many have, and I could not be more grateful. I have now rolled out a simple membership to cover the projects that need hosting and, hence, carry a monthly bill. The likes of Scribe. And Micro.threads.

With one membership, there are no complicated tiers. And no special rewards, either. Frankly, I could limit the number of members to ten as that’s all I need to support my ongoing side projects. But I am keeping things simple for now.

However, in today’s tumultuous world, one full of uncertainty, to expect anything in return for my hobby projects would be unfair on my part. No obligation, hence, on anyone whatsoever.

The recent discussions around social media platforms tire me. BlueSky. Threads. Mastodon. And whatnot. They are all the same. Trying to cash in on the lost interest in Twitter. To be similar to Twitter, yet distinct at the same time. I see people try these different services and get impressed. Their interest fades away after pounding the timelines with posts. This has happened to me with all the above services.

The network effect that Twitter managed 15 years back won’t be recreated. Twitter was a lone service. Fifteen years ago was a different time.

When I joined Twitter, I cared zilch about how I should use it. Or how I shouldn’t. That was a different me then. Now, I think a lot about how and how much I should use social networks.

I hold myself back out of fear. Fear of uncertainty. Fear of complexity. Fear of promises.

The fear won’t let me get hooked to any social networks anymore. Syndicating posts from my blog is not going to do that either.

I had forgotten that I had purchased iA Writer and had the app installed on my Mac. So odd that I missed this. Anyway, with my plan to shut down Scribe, I am back to writing with iA Writer.

I believe Ulysses' overall better experience, both writing and publishing, attracted me to the app. I subconsciously moved away from iA Writer, never to return. Time to change that. iA Writer was the first writing app that I fell in love with. It’s no surprise, then, that it continues to impress.

While working on my blog’s recent redesign, I decided not to display the date/time as part of the post. Sure, I am not the only one who does that.

Although debatable, I find that detail useless for my type of writing, and I was ridding the interface of every element that wasn’t essential. I don’t write posts which are relevant only to a particular period. I am not writing news articles that will go stale. Plus, if there’s an article that forms the context for a post, I explicitly link to that.

So why does it matter when the words are written? I stand by and am even proud of every post I have written. Short or long. On the contrary, I don’t want the age of the post to impact what it says. It’s still me saying that. Just younger. It is the same reason I don’t correct my old posts.

I have also seen people put a disclaimer on old posts saying it may not reflect one’s current views. Colin puts such a disclaimer on his older posts and writes.

Just because I may not think a certain way, however, doesn’t mean that I can’t be proud of what I have previously written — some of it is among my best writing.

I agree with Colin. But for the same reason, I don’t want to put any such disclaimer. Isn’t it obvious that one’s perspective towards things changes over time? Why call it out, then?

I accept that not showing the date is extreme. After all, I still include the date in the source and RSS feeds. But removing a detail is the best way to determine if it is essential. And currently, I am all for a reset.

A few months back, I responded to Om Malik’s thoughts on the importance of stream of posts on one’s blog. Here’s what I proposed we bloggers should do.

Recommend stuff to the reader on our platform, our blogs. On our home pages. And around our posts. But instead of letting AI decide, let’s curate these recommendations manually.

I have since wanted to update my website, my primary home on the web, to do away with the standard design principle for a blog. Why does every home page have to look a certain way? Pages after pages of reverse chronological lists of posts.

I recently quipped that blogs have made the web boring. That every blog looks the same. All themes are more or less the same. A slight layout change here. A margin or padding there. Varied columns. But all look the same to me. You know that you are reading a blog.

I wanted to stop doing that. I want to curate the experience for the readers. Worst case, for the one reader that’s me. So, I have been working on laying out the structure for this space afresh¹.

A home page recommends a selection of posts. No page’s a reverse chronological list. Even if a reader visits one that’s supposed to be, for example, archive, they won’t see a list. Every page allows a search and an option to visit a random post. A prominent nav bar allows navigation around every post. There are a lot of other minor touches sprinkled across.

Plus there are colours. Minimal doesn’t mean black and white. Minimal can have personality. It does now.

Satisfied after playing around and iterating with the changes for a couple of days, I applied the layout to the site today. Once I did, I wondered if this space was a typical blog any more. As per Wikipedia.

A blog is an informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page.

Not a diary. No reverse chronological order. And yet I don’t care. To me, a blog is what a blogger wants it to be. And I am done with the stream of posts. So here’s to a bold new start.

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1. I do maintain and actively publish at a traditional blog and the nav bar points to that. Irony much? ↩︎

I sometimes hate how I read stuff online – hopping from link to link. Reading, but not letting it absorb within. To not pause and think. That’s not the way I like to do it. If what I read doesn’t make me agree, disagree or learn something new, it’s futile.

Seth Godin reminded me today that “no one cares about the noise in our head (or the actions we take) nearly as much as we do”. That noise kept me wary of changing a few things with my setup till today. I pulled the plug and have changed how and where I write. Thanks, Seth!

I wish every theme on Micro.blog got its own test blog under the account of the author of the theme. That way, a demo site is always available to try the theme out before applying. Thoughts @manton?

My writing has changed a lot over the years. I read a post from 14 years ago, and it reads.. carefree. In a good way.

When I write something these days, I replace every “you should..” with “I am..”. If what I wrote doesn’t hold true, I don’t publish.

While responding to an observation from Ben Werdmuller, Om Malik asks, “Is reverse chronological ‘stream’ still a valid design principle?” I believe the answer is complicated.

As with most folks commenting on Om’s blog, I have been a follower of his writings for a long time. And also been a blogger since updating one’s blog, and visiting others to look for inspiration was a multiple-times-a-day activity. It still matters for all of us who have consumed the stream of blog posts. Or at least we understand it.

I generally follow blogs through RSS, where a stream is meaningless. But I would still follow a linked post to a new blogger that I don’t know about. I then browse through the stream of posts to see if the blogger’s topic and writing interest me. If it does, I subscribe to his RSS. So the stream is important for me for discoverability.

But the people who haven’t ever consumed such a stream of blog posts may not find it helpful. The algorithm has spoilt us with the “recommendations” – the links to the other stuff on the platform.

So we as bloggers should serve the same. Recommend stuff to the reader on our platform, our blogs. On our home pages. And around our posts. But instead of letting AI decide, let’s curate these recommendations manually. We have all the tools that we need. Tags/Categories. Let’s add a few layers if required.

I have already started doing this with my blog. I have modified my home page to take readers to specific sections of the blog. I have separated posts prominently. I want to introduce a few more sections on blog and around posts. This is all still a work in progress, though.

Another tangential thought. We have stripped our blogs of all the fun in our quest to get minimal. Do you remember the tag/word clouds? Posts by date? By category? Or most commented? Let’s bring them all back. We had more than one way of presenting our blogs to the readers. Why did we stop that?

I find reading on my smartphone much more convenient than anywhere else. That also means sharing stuff is difficult if I do not have social media apps on my device. It’s been more couple of months since I deleted all the apps from my smartphone. And it’s painful.

Wish there were more apps like Buffer that supported publishing to multiple places, especially Micropub and ActivityPub.

I published a post a day back while I was still recovering from the cold. I didn’t fuss about where to write. Or in what manner to do so. I didn’t do many reviews. I just wrote what I was feeling deep within and clicked sent. I still haven’t read that post again. I don’t want to.

Why am I not able to write? I lack drive. I’m curious why the words have dried up suddenly.

I disabled all cross-posting today. I will manually syndicate the posts I want. Basically, I consider all platforms independent and will use them in their native forms.

Since I moved microblogging to my blog, I have always focused on getting the look of the short posts right. I didn’t want them to be lost amidst the prominent titled posts. Nor did I like it the other way around. That meant I never had either looking how I wanted them. Well, that’s not the case anymore.

After a long time, I am finally happy with how my long-form articles and short-form notes sit distinctly together. The setup took time and some crazy personalization, but I had to shake a few things just for the sake of it. I had started taking my blogging too seriously, and I didn’t like that. I work better when it’s fun.

The only downside is that it is an entirely custom and personalized theme. And for now, I am okay with that. Plus, it’s still a work in progress.

If you write a blog and are interested in conversing with your readers, do include a link for the reader to do so right below your every post. I would love it if every blog post had a way for me to respond. A comment form. An email address for me to mail the writer at. Or even a link to the social media where the post is syndicated. Basically, redirect me, the reader, to any place where the conservation is taking place. I can, of course, theorise why most people have stopped doing that.

First, the spam industry has dampened one of the promises of the internet — having open connections with people on the web. We are afraid now that we will be bombarded by comments and messages that we have no interest in sifting through. Second, most blogging platforms have stopped providing an easy way to enable conversations, which came built-in with WordPress and others. It’s an added decision (and even a cost in some cases) for the writer to provide such an option to its reader. A trouble that many folks just don’t want to sign up for.

I wish that wasn’t the case. My conversations with people around the words I write have been an essential aspect of my blogging for the past many years. If you haven’t tried that, or you did but aren’t doing it actively anymore, give it a chance again.

You take the trouble so that your user doesn’t have to.