/ JOURNAL
Blog Questions Challenge
Nobody tagged me — I don’t write often enough to be ‘a blogger’ — but you know, sometimes you just have to find a reason to post.
This post was inspired by a series of my own internet favourites writing about how and why we blog. So thanks to Jon Hicks, Ethan Marcotte, Rachel Andrew and more for their own posts and their inspiration down the years. At this moment in time, in this technology culture, holding on to independent publishing feels more important than ever.
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I’m of a generation of designers where blogging was an expectation so I started because I thought I should, but continued because I needed and wanted my own space.
In part that’s been about finding and shaping my own voice, and not wanting to be confined by corporate blogs where that’s the culture. As an introvert, the written word comes more naturally to me, and the act of writing is often how I form my own perspectives.
This site's posts date back to ~2014, but I've been writing occasionally online for a good decade before that. I've not preserved the posts from those earlier days, but maybe that's a little project for the future.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?
I’m using Kirby right now. Like so many of my peers, I’ve messed about with almost everything, but Textpattern was the first thing that had the feel of an environment that I truly enjoyed and wanted to write in.
Since then, I’ve had brief flings with Statamic, Eleventy, but Kirby is the first thing in a while that’s felt like a true Textpattern-like home. The highest of praise.
So much of a blogging CMS is about feel to me. I’ve tried but never quite clicked with Movable Type, WordPress and more. I’m drawn to the more spare and minimal environments; to flat files and Markdown. Writing shouldn’t feel hard.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
That I’m writing in a mix of iA Writer and Kirby’s interface is really my own fault. I initially set Kirby up from its Plainkit, and I write so infrequently these days that when I do I keep finding things I’ve not built in yet, and need to. Someday I will fix this but, once again, today is not that day.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
Only very occasionally. Like a lot of us, I share less and less online these days, and I’m resistant to adding to the middle-aged white guy noise. So, in the main it’s about scratching an itch, something that feels more than a social media length thought, or something where I’ve no outlet for it otherwise.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I’m so prone to posting and fixing that I try and let a post ‘sit’ for while before making it public but I am my own worst sub-editor.
What’s your favourite post on your blog?
7/7 from 2020 means a lot to me. It’s a rare post for me in that it is relatively personal; very much written as an act of memory for a place and period of my life; and because the London bombings were such a shocking, defining moment.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
As mentioned further up, I know I’m barely scratching the surface of what I could be doing with Kirby. In my dreams I’d love to replicate the sort of automatic publishing/sycing from iA Writer to a live site that I very briefly had with Statamic. Less friction, more publishing.
Next?
Ben Terrett, Phil Gyford and Russell Davies are three of my favourite internet people, and a central part of the UK’s distinct blogging culture. I’m really interested in how Ben and Russell have, unlike me, had the discipline to resist the lure of the shiny new thing and defiantly stick with Typepad. Phil’s weekly posts are my favourite thing on the internet right now.