Personal Blogs Solve Problems

Personal brand this, personal brand that.

But the original digital personal brand was a personal blog.

This isn't an uncommon sentiment, but personal blogs are powerful, even though they have gone out of fashion.

And not just for nostalgia of the early internet or community building, although those are valid benefits too.

Why I Started This Blog

Every day, I come across new challenges, problems, and learnings. You do too.

No matter how small or large these obstacles, each individual's unique life circumstances brings them in contact with unique problems.

My blogging philosophy is simple: Fill in the gaps

Whenever I learn something new or interesting, and whenever I solve a problem, I fill in the gaps. I look for whether that problem is elaborated on already (most of the time, it is). But if not, I write about it.

Often, this looks like this:

• I stumble across a problem
• I search on Google, talk with LLMs, or otherwise try to find a solution
• Often, I can find well-elaborated solutions.
• Sometimes, I don't find much to help solve the problem, or the answer is hidden.
• Regardless, once I've solved the problem, there are likely gaps in the solutions I was looking for initially.
• Even if the solutions are widely talked about already, there are gaps I can fill in.

By filling in the gaps, a personal blog is problem-solving via death of a thousand papercuts.

I write in my personal blog both for fun, but also to document micro-solutions. I never know if people will find these helpful.

The only way to know if others value what you create is by showing them.

Benefits of Personal Blogging

1. It's enjoyable (for me)

Writing is structured thinking.

But more than that, writing is about generating ideas.

This is something I learned through my website, Essays That Worked.

Writing is not just about organizing your ideas or communicating them to others: writing itself is the process of idea generation.

Those spontaneous, tangential thoughts while writing are the valuable byproduct of writing itself.

2. It's a time capsule

This blog is still quite nascient, but even still I've found myself reading old posts and forgetting I had even wrote them.

It's simply fun and satisfying to have a permanent, public record of your learnings over time.

3. It (may) help others

I don't write with the sole intention of helping others, but optimistically that is a byproduct of my blog.

My micro-solutions to my micro-problems are shared by others. But they're often nuanced, "inconsequential", or too niche to have been widely written and talked about already.

To me, the place I can add value is by filling in the gaps. Cliché as it is, writing for yourself (building something you would benefit from) will likely benefit others too.

The Future of Personal Blogging

Naval once said something like, "Everyone wants to write a book. Nobody wants to read one."

This is true in sentiment, and maybe just specific to the apparent decling in writing/reading.

While both grow exponentially, consumption seems to outpace production online.

I'd much rather read a solution from a personal blog of a real person than an anonymized one from some company.

"Nobody wants to write a personal blog" is a good enough reason to do so.