In a world that is trying to make writing not matter with dumb-ass "AI," I think it is more important than ever to write. I have felt this way since microblogging became the primary method of social posting online years ago, to be honest. Long-form writing and note-taking is one of my favorite things to do, and I think everyone should do it. You don't have to be a "writer" to find benefits to writing and blogging. You don't have to have a niche to get into writing regularly either. When the internet was first taking shape and blogs were the norm, people were blogging about everything - whether it was just about their day, the movie they just watched, or whatever else. You don't have to be "good" at writing to benefit from writing as well. You should just write. Frankly, you don't even need to share what you write if you don't want to - we've been journaling for thousands of years at this point! There is a beauty to being able to express yourself with the written word. For one, it lets you express your opinion, and [[Your Opinion Matters|your opinion matters]]. Putting your voice out there is a singularly unique experience that I think is always worth doing. It helps you articulate the way you feel about the world around you, and gives you a level of confidence in the things you say because you really have to deliberate over what you're saying. It can be challenging - as an example, it took me like 4 weeks to finally figure out how what exactly I was trying to say with this post! - but so is weight-lifting, and that shit's pretty good for you too. But one of the biggest benefits to writing takes a while to reveal itself to you. Literally - it's after you've written for years and years. Yesterday I mentioned a [[A Fashion Critique of Dresspheres in FFX-2|post I wrote in 2018]] to some friends in a discord call. At first just thinking about that gave me psychic damage, but the reality is that it's awesome that I have a record of stuff that I've been writing for the past 7 years and more. It's a yardstick for my progress as a person, which is helpful in its own right. I sometimes feel like I haven't improved as a writer much, but then I find stuff I wrote when I was 14 and realize how wrong I truly am about that. But besides that, it's just nice for record keeping. I've been doing a lot of note-taking on Obsidian after [[My Obsidian Workflow|shifting the workflow a bit]], and doing so has made me realize that sticking with it will be very important to me in the future. I'm 30 years old. I'm not halfway into the grave, obviously, but I mentioned on [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/taniyn.quest/post/3lhhe7ipz2s2r) how things are starting to get...blurry in my memory, stuff that I would normally consider core to my existence. Note-taking more about my general experiences with things, even if it's not a "critique," means that I can look back on these notes and not have to worry about jogging my memory. In fact, the very act of writing helps reinforce memories for me, which makes it all the more useful. Anyways, one of the last reasons I think blogging in particular is awesome, particularly in the year of the Horrible Tech Oligarch, is that there is immense value in controlling your own space. Social Media demons have done their best to take away your self-sufficiency. They give you a platform and then rug pull you with [[Enshittification|enshittification]]. You deal with it because you think the alternative is too difficult. You have convinced yourself that you don't have the technical ability to start a blog because of them. I am here to tell you that it's simply not true!! It's easier than ever to do it. Off the dome here's 3 places[^2] you can spin up a blog in minutes: - [Write.as](https://write.as/) - [Bear Blog](https://bearblog.dev/) - [Ghost](https://ghost.org/)[^1] Literally pick any of these and just start posting. Don't worry about length, style, aesthetic or topic. Write about your favorite game. Write about a song you're trying to remember. Write about your day and no I don't care how fucking "mundane" it was! The point is to do it. When you do, you will find your mind connect things together, and you'll write more and more. You wanna know how this whole post came about? I was thinking about how much I love my pen!!! I was thinking about how much I love writing with my tombow brush pen, and then I thought about how much I love writing, and then I was like, "well, *why*?" And here we are 819 words and counting later! All of this sounds sappy, and that's because it is. You matter. Writing is an important declaration of that fact. Write and share the link everywhere or don't share it at all and let me stumble upon it a year from now when I'm trying to find someone else who loved **Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime**. But seriously: *just. write!* Writing is awesome!!! Do it!!! [^1]: This one doesn't have a free tier but it's easy to use [^2]: [Don't use Substack please](https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011232/substack-nazi-moderation-demonetization-hamish-mckenzie)