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Writing into the quiet 2025-09-08-02

There's a conversation ¹ about whether blogging is lonely and I wanted to reflect on that from the perspective of 24ish years of sharing notes on my idiosyncratic interests. Blog conversations remind me of the Great Conversation between book authors² sometimes with centuries in between. In contrast, blogs. are quick, open, convivial.

When it comes to developing ideas, I like public writing more than the ephemeral cacophany of in-person conversations, social media @replies or private e-mails.

My notes are often for my present understanding and sometimes for my future selves. If they resonate with others: bonus!

I think this might be a useful way to think about it.

Write out of self-interest. Leave the door open for serendipity

Then it's not about "No one's liking or commenting" or even "Why can't I find other people like me"

It's more like: I'll keep exploring and taking notes, because it's fun. Maybe I'll bump into others and swap notes someday. Who knows?

There's a conversation about feeling lonely while blogging that echoes through the years. Here's a recent instance: Do blogs need to be so lonely? - The History of the Web; I also liked The silent applause | Robert Birming and Blogs don’t need to be so lonely – Manu. Me, I mostly write for myself, and I don't feel particularly lonely doing so. It's a pleasant surprise whenever I hear from someone, but it's not my main goal. I'm content to plod along, trying to untangle my thoughts and leave some breadcrumbs for my future self. This has been very handy not only for technical posts, but also for things like being able to remember what it was like to be a twenty-something. Writing into the quiet without expecting a reply is like enjoying a comfortably silent beach and occasionally being delighted when you discover someone else's message in a bottle.

Blog conversations are so much faster than book conversations. We don't have to pass through publishing gatekeepers, we don't have to wait years… just ideas bouncing back and forth. Marvelous.

Commenting is easier than writing from scratch, so it would be nice to give people that space to share their follow-on thoughts more easily, but it's becoming more of a hassle as parts of the Web become more hostile. (Thanks, spammers and advertising cookie-trackers.) I turned off comments on my blog back in March as Disqus had gotten overbearing with ads and tracking. I didn't feel like figuring out another commenting service or self-hosting my own. I don't miss wading through all the spam. I do miss the ease of public comments and the tips people shared, mostly because it was convenient to see and share those replies in one place. Still, there's space for commentary. Some people comment via Mastodon or their own blogs. Once in a blue moon, a post will strike enough of a chord to get shared via Reddit or something like that. And there's always e-mail.

I like blog carnivals: someone proposes a theme, people can choose to write about it, and the host links to all those posts for easier discovery. There's one for IndieWeb and there's one for Emacs. It's fun seeing all these different takes on the same topic.

I wish it was easier for more people to share what they've been figuring out. I don't think the technology is the limiting factor. My mom used to keep a blog on Blogger, and she also wrote some posts in the self-hosted Wordpress I'd set up for her before. My sister writes long stories on Facebook and Instagram so that she can untangle her thoughts and capture the memories. Never mind that Facebook is a walled garden that's hard to follow outside its algorithmic feed; at least she's writing. I think it's more that the process of sitting down and turning your thoughts into words takes time and energy. That's the hard part, but that's also what's worthwhile. You can't skip it by using a large language model.

Is writing lonely? I wish more people had the space to sit with their thoughts and figure them out, and I wish they were easier to find. I'll settle for reaching across time and space: to my future self, for sure, and maybe to others whom I may or may not interact with. Send enough bottles out to sea, comb the beach often enough, and I'll find plenty of people who like to take that quiet, thoughtful approach to life (even as we gently poke fun at ourselves for possibly overthinking things). Fortunately, if they blog, it's easy to keep in touch lightly: not limited by anyone's energy or interest at a particular point in time, but just open to serendipity.