What is a website, according to Laurel Schwulst

Excellent post by Laurel Schwulst, My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?.¹ In this, she brilliantly describes all the things a website can be, and gives compelling reasons on why you should start your own personal website:

Today more than ever, we need individuals rather than corporations to guide the web’s future. The web is called the web because its vitality depends on just that — an interconnected web of individual nodes breathing life into a vast network. This web needs to actually work for people instead of being powered by a small handful of big corporations — like Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and Google.

Individuals can steer the web back to its original architecture simply by having a website. I think artists, in particular, could be instrumental in this space-showing the world where the web can go.

Schwulst focuses on artists and creatives, but truly anyone can follow the same train of thought and start a personal website.

If you are already convinced to start your own website but you fear having nothing interesting to say, and that maybe a personal website or blog is too much pressure for you, well, for inspiration I am pointing you to Robin Rendle’s recent post on the matter:

Blog your heart! Blog about something you’ve learned, blog about something you’re interested in. Blog about cameras or HTML or that one browser bug you’ve noticed this morning or blog about the sky above you right this very second. How many clouds are up there? Blog about your annoying kids and your fucked up relationship and blog about that terrifying time when you went to the beach with some people you weren’t really friends with and you got drunk and then it got real dark and you didn’t have a tent so you slept on a sand dune all night long.

I say again to ye: just blog!

This post also reminded me of my own post from last year: There is no place like home: Why I love to blog.

I will add a few more hints on what to write on your blog:

• You know how annoying this LinkedIn news feed is? Tell the world about you really feel about it.
• How many news websites do you check every day, and why?
• What are the three things you recently changed in your life to save energy?
• What is the best thing you bought in the last few years?
• Write an honest review of your work computer.
• Explain again why you hate or love these Marvel movies.²
• Publish a list of reasons of why you just started your own website (hopefully including a link to this very post).

Maybe I too should get inspiration from one of these, and publish a little more often.