I love writing. While ideas and memories are fleeting, writing them down records their existence almost permanently. Blogging, for instance, allows enthusiasts to write their thoughts and share them to a community.
In my flagship blog, I mentioned that I rode that tide back then, tried a lot of blog platforms, and just stopped at one point to give way to my college studies. In short, I stopped growing. I abandoned blogging.
So, I enrolled to an online course about blogging. I jotted down a few insights, but I noticed that too much time has already been consumed just talking about titles. My confusion was visible—why? Titles are supposed to be keywords, right? Should we not focus more on the content rather than the title? Why is this course showing me how to write a title as if this is a headline writing seminar? And even more confusing, why is this course promoting clickbait titles?
Blog is short for 'Weblog'. It literally means logging your thoughts on the web. On the rise of Tumblr and Wordpress, blogging was a social community of pen-named teens who literally just wanted to share their thoughts about anything under the sun.
Blog used to be more personal. It was like writing a public diary under a pen name. Blogging used to be about connecting people, sharing your day, talking about the things you love, finding other people's day interesting, exchanging questions and comments with total strangers, learning about slices of life on the other side of the world. The goal was to log your day into the web to make your memories permanent, and to share a little part of yourself with online friends. Better yet, to track your self-improvement, growth, confidence, expertise to a hobby, etc. Old bloggers used to focus on self-expression, even for extreme introverts.
Now, with magazines and feature entities joining the blogging industry, the focus shifted. It became focused on social clout. The term "influencer" trended—it became the new brand of blogging. Less words, more visuals. Back then, blogs were rather unrefined and raw words because they were supposed to be like public diary entries. We shared our links to people, but did not really care how many views we get. Expressing our thoughts were enough—getting readers engaged is a bonus.
Today, visitor analytics and engagement statistics play very important roles. They might even be more important than the content itself. Views and likes serve as benchmarks of how good or bad a content is. Going back to the online course I watched, "keeping your audience interested" felt like it was more important than expressing what you want.
The format of blogs also changed. For instance, "vlogs" became famous. But honestly, a 10-minute vlog can actually be digested into a 500-word text blog (approximately four-minute read) if the walking, jokes, laugh tracks, sound effects, "thanks for watching, please subscribe" intro and outro are removed.
I have nothing against modern bloggers and vloggers. They are cool. All sorts of people—introverts, extroverts, hobbyists, calligraphists, travelers, connoisseurs, artists, feature writers, educators, analysts—have been reached by the light. The umbrella topics are more or less still the same—daily adventures of life—but it broadened. The range of blogging was grown so wide, and it is very heartwarming that the blogging industry is very much alive until today.
It has grown so much, that it outgrew me.
I became a "boomer" in the thing I used to consider as passion.
In the course of learning, there are things we choose and things we do not. Of the things we do not choose, there are those which can be returned to and things that simply melt away in the past. Good thing, most of the things we love are intangible, and can be revived.
There is fear in relearning. This is the doubt that adults feel when they consider graduate or law school after years of academic inactivity. This is the nervousness that parents feel when they need to teach their children school stuff that they have already forgot. This is the uneasiness of a returnee when they first set foot on their hometown after years of decades. There is fear in relearning. There is beauty, excitement, and hope as well.
I would like to continue writing diary-type blogs and principles sharing like before. Then, gradually, I would like to learn the pop topics that modern readers prefer. The old style is gold—since the reason for putting up this blog is mainly to heal and improve myself. In order to do that, I need to move forward and merge my past with the present.
For you, reader, whatever things have outgrown you and you think you cannot catch up, I hope you remember that you can always relearn. That old love carved deep in your mind cannot be erased. You just need to wipe a bit, remember what it looks like, and revive the soul.
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