People & Blogs

People & Blogs is a weekly newsletter run by Manu. I had the lovely opportunity to be part of it—read the interview here. Please check out the newsletter and consider starting a blog on your own domain. Blogs are essential for “rewilding the internet” (borrowing these words, though I don’t know the origin source). The web is so much more than social media, and blogging isn’t only for developers.

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I was struck by a sudden need to write in public last year. I’d been writing in private but never felt the need to put anything online because I have this thing about wanting to remain mysterious. At least, that’s the story I was telling myself.

I wasn’t sure what to call this “writing in public” when I first started publishing pieces on my personal website. It’s not a public diary, but it builds on thoughts from my journal.

This blog is where I engage with contradictions within myself — the main one being this tension between wanting to feel safe being seen and having a deep need to remain private at the same time. Closely related is the desire to be understood yet remain illegible, which stems from some ancient longing to “fit in” while having my identity permanently tied to being a misfit. Do you read me?

Writing this blog has helped me be OK with posting things and then disagreeing with myself a day, days, weeks, or months later. I find it amusing. It’s human to change your mind — to evolve — and having a space that witnesses this constant becoming is something I cherish.

For the longest time, I couldn’t solve this problem of how do I exist publicly online without compromising privacy, falling into doom-scrolling, or abandoning my truth for the sake of validation?

A part of me hates the ever-expanding graveyard of content we’re contributing to and the fact that we’re depleting resources to sustain this graveyard. Yet, I also believe that the internet and social media are great places for people to share authentic stories in whatever format they feel called to.

My main problem with social media has always been the “broadcasting and appealing to the audience” style of performance it sometimes requires. I couldn’t trust myself to fully participate on social media because I was worried I’d give in to the pressure. I didn’t want to become part of the hive, and I didn’t want to be a slave to the algorithms. I still don’t.

Time changes you, though, if you let it. The more I understood the sources of my resistance, the more I stopped feeling the imaginary pressure to conform or the compulsion to resist. The more I befriended the eternal contrarian in me, the more at peace I became.

It’s absolutely worth expressing yourself through your personal stories, interests, and tastes. It’s also worth exploring what’s out there and finding intersections between what you care about and what everyone else cares about, between you and “the mainstream.”

But to do the latter without knee-jerk resistance or getting confused, you need to know — with a high enough level of confidence — who you are at the core. What specific flavour of misfit are you? What’s the origin story of the misfit in you?

If I had to convince anyone to start a blog or to write, I would use this argument: blog to discover the real you — the misfit you — and document the becoming. Write to become less blurry¹. You don’t need an audience for this. In fact, it’s better to have zero audience to begin with.

I don’t know what the difference between blogging and writing is, and I’m not sure it matters to me at this point. To let something grow organically is to allow it to be whatever it is without predetermining the form or category. Or in design terms, it’s “form follows function.” Becoming doesn’t need a destination.

My blog is the source of truth, and all the other platforms are ancillary. I adapt things from here to each platform — I edit them, strip them down, or embellish them. I feel at peace with this because I know that the most authentic version lives here. There’s the stage, and there’s home. I know that if any of the platforms disappear or turn into something I don’t like, my posts are safe here. I also trust that the people who are interested in the original versions and loose thoughts will find their way here.

It’s possible that one day, I’ll get tired of proactively managing everything like this. It’s also possible that one day, I’ll have enough of all social media (once again), or completely disappear from the internet. For now, this works for me. I don’t know if it works for anyone else, but I hope you’ll spend some time thinking about how you want to exist online and what a digital home means to you, instead of just defaulting. Defaulting is the antithesis of authenticity.

You don’t need to be a techie to start a blog on your own domain. I was not a techie when I started, and I still don’t consider myself one. If you don’t want to deal with code, you can use this, this, and this. There’s also WordPress.

I’m grateful for People & Blogs and this interview (thanks again Manu). Reading authentic writing has inspired me to write, and knowing that people read blogs warms my heart. Here are some I discovered through P&B: Zinzy’s website, maya.land, Conscience Round.

Thank you for reading.