There is no place like home: Why I love to blog

Only a few minutes after I tried out The Forest, a new website-discovery utility made by Manu Moreale and Carl Barenbrug, I’ve came across this post by Daniel Cuttridge, on his personal blog:

What I like about writing on a blog is that unlike elsewhere I don’t have to condense my writing into 100-whatever characters. Or having to write something I know will be popular enough to please an algorithm.

This paragraph caught my attention because it is also the way I feel about writing on my own blog. Later, Cuttridge writes:

You could even go a step further and start writing a blog of your own.

No matter what you decide on doing about it now or in the future, one thing I can say is that you’ve probably come away from reading this with a new thought or idea. Which is exactly my point. Blogs are valuable to us.

Well, even if I don’t fully agree with everything in his post, I guess Daniel is right here: starting a blog of your own is a good idea, and I came away with a new idea reading this.

What I like about my blog is that it feels like home, while social platforms are more like a bar or a restaurant. You go there to get a drink or to have dinner, you have a good time, you socialise, you meet friends and feel energised by the crowd around you, you eventually pay the bill, and then you go home.

Once at home you can finally relax and be more like yourself, the real you. For instance, you can wear whatever you want, do whatever you feel like doing, the way you like doing it, without worrying of what a stranger sitting next to you might think. Home is your personal space: familiar, comfortable, and safe.

My blog feels a lot like this compared to social media: very few people visit, but people who do have a better perception of me and my thoughts than people I talk to for ten minutes in a noisy bar. Sure, I can go there with friends and have great conversations, but my guests, my visitors, are more engaged. They will ask about the books on my shelves, the music I’m playing, and we can take our time to have real, deep, more intimate conversations.

This week, I have spent a few hours updating the Jolly Teapot: CSS mostly, with a few HTML tweaks here and there, as I would clean my flat extensively before having a few friends over. Not only I am very happy with the results — the website is now blazing fast — but it truly felt like I was building something for me and my visitors. Like a well-cooked homemade dish, I hope my guest will enjoy it.

Either way, there is no place like home.