Matthias Ott predicting 2023 is The Year of the Personal Website:
Your personal website is a place that provides immense creative freedom and control. It’s a place to write, create, and share whatever you like, without the need to ask for anyone’s permission.
This is one of the main reasons I started my blog. I had been writing for other peoples for a long while, providing tech news sites with 4–5 posts a day for free, but wasn’t allowed to write about what I want to. My writing wasn’t an expression of me, it felt like being exploited.
So, a created a personal website. Something that could reflect me. It linked out to the posts I was still writing for other sites, but also mixed in photos, personal thoughts and everything else I wanted to post. It was my place on the internet, and in many ways it was me.
Since 2012 I’ve never stopped blogging. Unfortunately, back then I wasn’t really concerned about my posts, so when I moved or decided to change things I pruned older things and ones I didn’t like. So many of my words are lost, many don’t have my name on any more, but lots and lots are still here.
I won’t lose any of them again. Nor will I give them to other websites to monetise for their gain, or get drawn into the worst if of the worst on display. There have been many years that blogging is “coming back” but it never left. This year more than any other, it might be true though. We’re dusting off our personal websites and making the internet ours again. My origin story will be different to all others, and some people will be starting right now. I can’t wait to see what we build together, with our blogs.
I’ve never been a fan of black and white photos. Not in the sense that I don’t like them, I’m just not drawn to them, and they don’t speak to me as much as some people. My wife, on the other hand, is obsessed with black and white. Shooting in it constantly, or editing all of our photos into monochrome afterwards. Every single photo print that is up in our house I’ve had to edit into monochrome to her tastes, and until now, it’s been frustrating.
I have no idea what flipped in my head at the weekend, but I just decided to go out and shoot in black and white. I found a really nice film recipe that emulated old Illford film and off I went.
Since doing so, I’ve shot so many basic things that have been transformed to show much more in the photo. By switching to black and white, the images show so much more drama. Not to mention, I feel like I’m stepping back in time to one much simpler than now. The below shot is straight from camera jpegs whilst walking the dog to try to show what I mean. It’s boring, but appealing.
I love the noise, the creamy colours and the texture of the leaf. There’s just something about black and white that I’ve failed to notice so far. Perhaps it’s because I’m shooting in black and white, so I’ve only ever seen the shot that way. Instead of shooting in colour and effectively removing it all? I’m not certain.
This isn’t so to say I’m converted, but a simple change to my camera has enabled me to see things differently. There aren’t many things that are like this any more, so it’s a strange feeling. Plus, I also have my wife’s “I told you so” in my ear!
It appears that this
is sticking. At least for now. I am 8 days into it (I started a bit before deciding to purchase pro) with a streak going and everything. Out of those first few days I almost forgot once and didn’t complete my morning pages until 2pm. Which I don’t think is bad going for something I am still unsure what to do with.Whenever I write about this people come back with all sorts of suggestions, that I have tried numerous time. I could be really stupid but I still don’t know what to write half the time. I am just getting into the habit of opening the app to my morning pages journal and typing something out. It usually starts with some navel-gazing, but some thoughts and feeling usually come to the surface fairly quickly.
There is no way to know if this helps at all, but as an overall indicator of the new year, I do feel better in myself and have more motivation to do things. However, that could be that I actually managed to sleep over the holidays and my body is at a baseline of tiredness instead of in desperation mode (it was 2:20am this morning).
Weirdly, I actually enjoy the process of spending a few minutes to typing things out in my own bubble. I try to do 5 minutes, and it sometimes goes a little over. I can get quite a bit off my chest in that time. I am going to start saving more things to Day One when we spend time as a family and keep some pictures in there, but as for journaling, I am still unsure. As a first test I will do 30 days and see what I end up feeling like.
I often forget to put these two tiny words into my sentences. When I make link posts or try to make a point, it’s easy to get carried away and state your opinion as fact. When all we are really doing it publishing what we think.
There’s typically not many definitive answers to the things I tend to write about. It’s all ephemeral thoughts, feelings, educated guesses. There might be some research conducted here and there about the topics, but frequently the conclusions to those have more questions than answers.
There’s nothing wrong with giving our opinions on things, it’s the whole point, really. Blogging about topics and ideas that we have that might be right. Yet, I forget to put in those tiny words a lot of the time. I think a lot about the topics I write about, I just don’t write about thinking. I write about knowing.
Matt Birchler
:I think of likes on social media kind of like non-verbal responses in the real world.
I agree with the statements Matt makes (or made a while ago) because they are accurate to social media convention. Most people won’t reply, nor will the author get as much affirmation back to their post. But to that, I push back and say it doesn’t matter.
We’ve convinced ourselves to do things for likes and clicks. Posting for the sweet dopamine that comes from peoples responses when we shouldn’t care. As if posting to the internet is some kind of performative act.
I say shouldn’t because I get it, we all like likes, but we shouldn’t do. A like online is the social media version of “lol” to a text message. It means I’ve seen this, and I want to avoid appearing rude, so heres a button click.
In many ways, it’s worse. Even if, as Matt points out, the replies are mostly “cool” and other derivatives, at least the person took some time to do it. They didn’t fall down, responding with anything besides a button click. But pressing like makes you and the person on the other end feel good, so there’s no immediate downside, really.
It’s the long-term effects that cause the issues. Even though it may not apply to you, a huge proportion of people get self-worth from likes. They have become a yard stick that people measure themselves against, and have removed a lot of interaction. Not all interaction is verbal, I get it, but I also don’t have a counter next to the number of people that’s smiled at me today.