Blogs.
They are so last decade…

For a while it seemed like social media had made blogs redundant, but as the platforms pursued their intensive enshitification and people grew tired of their connection to ‘things’ (ideas, photos, articles, news) being filtered and reprioritised by the algorithms platform optimised to sell ads, blogs have in fact retained their relevance. And funnily enough they still serve the same purpose now as they did back then: as a personal archive, a conduit for sharing ideas, or really whatever the author wants them to be.

The first post here is dated September 18, 2006. I had a friend with a server install wordpress for me just after I got home from attending the Berlinale Talent Campus, with the words of Peter Broderick from a workshop ‘online marketing for indie film makers’ still ringing in my ears:
EVERY CREATIVE PERSON SHOULD HAVE A BLOG
I took the advice on blind faith but have never regretted it. And all these years later I am so very aware of & thankful for all the human connections that have occurred.

Why the nostalgia? Well I suspect as most productive creative people will tell you, being creative and doing things is not dependent on feedback. If you want to be creative, and unstoppable then the reward has to come from the work itself. For long time readers, remember when I used to make little ‘sound advice’ posts? There is one in particular that I always try to keep in mind: Sound Advice 061

Having said that, I also know every human being struggles with mental health at some time or other. Our energy & focus waxes and wanes. It is part of what makes us human. And I have always kind of loathed this meme:

The wrong solution is to become thick-skinned and immune to feedback, or to be completely self serving. A word of kindness can have an impact far beyond such a seemingly simple action. An actual example of the positive effect of unprompted feedback & encouragement occurred a few months back on Twitter. For no apparent reason Peter from CDM tweeted as below:

And one of the replies – also included above – is exactly the reason why the link sidebar reappeared on the right, soon after. They are right, a link shared by a person you trust & have an idea of their sensibilities can be invaluable, and can lead to the best kind of discoveries. Remember when that’s what the Internet felt like? Endless discovery.

Blogs also encourage learning through doing. For example, I am no coder but I slowly learnt how to use wordpress as a blog, then as a static portfolio platform and years later had enough knowledge (& knew what questions to ask) to build a Woocommerce site. From which I now earn my living. That is a massively positive side effect, from such a humble starting point. As the saying goes about overnight success: “There is no such thing as an overnight success. It takes time, effort and patience. You have to be willing to work for the long-term….”

Marc from Disquiet started a thread at Lines forum, with similar sentiment.
Please Share/Start Your Blog
With an accompanying essay on his blogs 20th anniversary

So consider this an invitation.
If you have a blog that includes any aspect of your creative process – music, sound, art, photography, poetry, whatever – then please feel free to leave a comment with a link to it and I will add it to the list of blogs. Also as Marc said: “If you’re looking for a definition of a blog, I’d say something with an RSS feed is a helpful way to think about it.”

Blogs.
They are the future!
A future unmediated by advertising and toxic algorithms.

EVERY CREATIVE PERSON SHOULD HAVE A BLOG