I haven’t posted in a while. Partly because I got busy with other projects. Partly because I had some technical issues to deal with on the site.
But mostly because I’m not quite sure anyone still reads blogs. And, to be honest, I wasn’t sure I really had anything to say.
For a while the conversation seems to have been moving elsewhere. It’s now on places like Substack, on podcasts, social media feeds like TikTok and Instagram. Moreover, Google’s AI overviews and ChatGPT are taking even more attention away from blogs like this, essays that actually provide them with the content they harvest and then serve back to readers.
On top of that, with all the content that’s out there, all the noise and confusion, all the AI slop and all the shrill and apocalyptic screeds, I started doubting whether I could add anything meaningful to the conversation. Or if I really wanted to.
Nonetheless, I’ve felt the pull to start writing again. In part for visibility. I am, after all, in business. And whether one likes it or not, putting yourself out there via a regular stream of content seems to be mandatory if you want to play in the attention economy. On top of that, there is some encouraging news if you’re worried your work will be be ignored: 80% of people online still read longer pieces when the topic grabs them .
Then there’s the question of what I would genuinely want to contribute. I used to approach these posts in a strategic way. They had the goal of building the business. What I would write would be informative. It would add value. It would build the brand.
Nothing wrong with this, per se, but such an approach does require a certain distancing from myself, an objectifying of what I truly believe and feel. Broadly speaking, it’s professional. But with that comes a degree of calculation and manipulation, and even a small dose of cynicism.
So, with a decreasing confidence that anyone would actually read what I’ve written, and a weakening belief in what I was writing, the posts became more and more intermittent, and then stopped altogether.
But, as you can see here, I’m starting up again. And I’m going to approach it differently from how I did before. For one, I hope to be more personal in what I put out, at least. For the longest time I thought my personal side had to be separate from my professional side, but that’s no longer the case. As you can see, I’m already using “I” instead of “we,” and this essay itself, more than many of the earlier blog posts, is a personal exploration. I hope to continue in this in this manner, at least in some of posts.
I’m not sure why it’s occurring now, but I do feel I might actually have something meaningful to say, at least something meaningful to myself. And I’m assuming that if I’m being honest, or as honest as I can possibly be right now, it may be meaningful to you as well.
And that’s really what writing is about, after all. It’s how we learn what it is we genuinely think. There’s that famous quote attributed to Joan Didion: “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” I agree, but I would add that it also helps us feel the world. It’s how we construct our own story.
And our story is the place where we live.