Joel Hooks shared this post about writing more and worrying less about the polish. He mentions how shifting from thinking about his writing and site as a blog to a digital garden helped him to write more:
Seriously. The idea of a "blog" needs to get over itself. Everybody is treating writing as a "content marketing strategy" and using it to "build a personal brand" which leads to the fundamental flawed idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed.
I agree with his sentiment, but feel like these digital garden folks are thinking about blogging in the wrong way. For me, my blog is my digital garden (this newsletter included). It's a place to write about what's on my mind, clarify my thinking, and share it with people like you.
Back in the early aughties, this felt like the common perception of personal blog. Maybe that shifted as less people hosted and designed their own sites and started to use services like Medium (or worse, Twitter threads) as a replacement.
The last couple of years has seen a slight resurgence in the personal blog and I hope 2021 continues that trend!
