What I'm Changing After A Year Of Blogging

Writing for the world is something which has ebbed and flowed for me over time.
I’ve always liked sharing my thoughts, starting with websites all the way back
when I was a kid. In times when I sustained it, I had various “blog”-like things
for technical projects which would often veer into sharing personal beliefs as
well.

It’s been a year since my latest attempt at what I expect to be a lifelong
endeavor. So I’ve been reflecting on how it’s gone, and that’s led me to make
some decisions on how I want to rework things going forward.

Raising the importance of articles

I have two goals with my writing:

I want the freedom to write what I want and put as much or as little effort
into it as I like.

I care a lot about presenting the work I think is good in the best way
possible to readers.

Although it might not seem like it, these goals are somewhat in conflict with
each other. Sometimes I’ll write up TILs or low-effort posts which may not be
that interesting to most people, and I don’t want these mixed up with my best
work in the eyes of readers encountering me for the first time.

I’m by no means unique in this; lots of internet writers have the same dilemma
and take different approaches to dealing with it. Two options I considered are:

High-effort content on the blog, low-effort content on social media.

Separating content on the blog into high-effort (articles, essays) and
low-effort (notes, snippets, TILs, etc.).

I don’t like option 1 because I don’t particularly like social media. I was off
it completely for years and have begrudgingly come back because it’s useful for
sharing things with people, but it’s not something I enjoy. More importantly, I
want everything I write to live on my own site, under my control, rather than
scattered across platforms I don’t own.

Instead I’ve taken option 2: I’ve decided to more strongly separate articles and
notes from each other.

Knock-on effects on Substack

The main way I’m doing this: I’m no longer going to be sendin…