where to post

I'm coming across the problem of not knowing which blog to post to after I write something. I now have three separate blogs.1

I have a more "polished" blog that I sometimes post longer and more refined pieces to. And I've been experimenting with https://micro.blog, which allows for micro-blogging (hence the name) and cross-posting.2

I have this vision in my head that this blog is my personal one. It's about me and my thoughts, and it's lower stakes. It's mostly for me and for friends. And it's un-indexed on search engines.3 But there's this hesitancy and this nagging voice in the back of my head asking "But what if I write something really insightful and great, and it was posted to the wrong place?"

That hesitancy probably comes from connecting this more vulnerable blog to posts meant for a wider audience. Maybe that vulnerability leads to authenticity. I'm not entirely sure. I have not come to a conclusion on this yet.

I suppose I can also always merge posts into a single site through permalinks and fancy redirects too if I ever decide to. These are solvable issues.

  1. Seems to be a pretty common "issue" in the indie blogging community. We all are addicted to making too many blogs↩

  2. micro-blogging is definitely possible in Bear too. But I don't know that I actually plan on keeping up on micro-blogging. I'd like to flesh things out with a bit more substance. We'll see.↩

  3. For now at least. I don't know why but I sort of like the idea of this blog being hard to find. Also in theory that also means the LLM-crawlers can't train on my data, but I doubt those companies are honoring that commitment.↩

Pretty in Pink, 1986 - ★★★

It’s Duckie’s world, we’re just living in it

Getting pretty hooked on water coloring kits. Had no idea this was a thing til recently

Don’t write for length

Something I really appreciate about Bear Blog (and personal blogging in general) is that there’s no intended audience involved. When I write on here I’m just writing to write.

I’m trying to write a lot more in general. And publish what I write. I don’t know that I have a specific goal.1 Maybe write something every day and try to publish things every few days. Really my goal is just to write.

And with part of that goal, I’m trying to remind myself: don’t write for length.

When you’re writing an article for circulation or a memo for work or a blog post you want to rank for SEO there’s often a goal for a specific length. Maybe it’s 500 words. Maybe it’s 2 pages. It could be whatever.

But that concept shouldn’t apply to personal blogging. You should just write until you think you’ve made your point and then stop.

And I think I’ve made my point.2

  1. in Ulysses editor, I do have a “goal” of a bunch of words, and have written thousands this week. Most of that will never be published. I have no idea where that goal came from.↩

  2. see what I did there?↩

Tech I Use

Right now, as of 21 minutes ago this is the main tech I use:

Email, Docs, and Drive: Proton Email. I love Proton so much I pre-purchased 3yr of my subscription in support (which normally I would not recommend doing for services, but I trust and support them and want them to succeed. Plus, email is something I don’t want to have to worry about for years).

Writing: Ulysses. Ulysses is an excellent app that honestly isn’t worth $40/yr. So while I love it, I can’t recommend it.

Search: On desktop I use Brave Search when I can. I find it to be the best option out of a slew of bad options. On my phone (and when I want to use Safari on my laptop) I use DuckDuckGo. It’s also mostly fine. I’m at the point where I think both of these options are better than Google. I've tried Kagi, but it's just not worth $10/mo and is objectively worse than Brave.

Notes: Apple notes. But never completely satisfied with it.

Laptop: 2024 MacBook Air

Phone: iPhone 14 Pro

Headphones: AirPods Pros

Hosting: Right now I use Magicpages for my Ghost site. I love it. But it’s probably overkill, and I doubt I'll continue after this year. Ghost is so powerful as a distribution tool, but since my goal isn't really writing for distribution, I'm unsure that really matters.

This site uses Bear. Bear is delightful and long-term I'll probably switch to it.

Obviously I'm paying way too much for hosting and need to simplify this.

Domains: Cloudflare. I have qualms about them being a US company and being cozy with Trump’s administration. But they’re the best in the business and are dirt cheap. I used to use Spaceship, which is owned by Namecheap and was... fine? I didn't like the interface and heard that the company can be kinda scummy.

Valentines' Week

This Valentines Day Eve, here is a list of things I have been grateful for lately:

  1. My health and body
  2. Crushes on strangers
  3. Public transit and a city that actively uses it
  4. The thought that there is so much love in the world and that love is a wonderful feeling
  5. Trinkets
  6. Good books

Playing around with Bear Blog and it’s delightful. But also can’t do nearly as much as Micro.blog (while somehow being more expensive). So hard to justify a switch!

Not sure why I have my Ghost Blog at this point..

instagram methadone

I have tried for years to curb my instagram usage. And after trying everything, I’ve finally found something that works. I call it Instagram methadone, but it’s really just the instagram web app. If you struggle with getting off instagram too, you should try it!

Here’s how it works: delete the instagram app off your phone. Then, go to Instagram in your browser and click “Add to home screen”.

You will still have instagram on your phone… It just sucks now!

It’s like a maintenance drug.

You can still use Reels all you like, they just suck now. DMs and search are still there, they just also suck. The endless scroll is even still there, but it also sucks. There’s no limits, but since it’s not really enjoyable, you’ll naturally find yourself not being as addictive.

This is probably how all social media apps should be, and there’s probably a lot more to be written on this. But for now I hope this helps!

I used to average something like 2-4 hours a day on instagram. I really hated it. Now I’m at like 0-15min. I feel ridiculous saying this but I feel like I’ve gotten part of my life back.

The Testament of Ann Lee, 2025 - ★★★½

I think my favorite part of this movie was the rabbit holes it sent me on afterwards. It was a decent movie but kind of incoherent in its plot.

Blogging to the void on micro.blog feels so much more fulfilling than true social media, don’t know why. Maybe because there is literally no objective to gain an audience? You’re just writing to write

Watched: The Pitt S2E5, 11:00 A.M. 🍿

The Pitt is just The Bear in a hospital setting I’ve always said this.

LLMs inherently are just distilling knowledge to an average output. So whenever companies complain about this ultimately they’re just complaining that their product is being used as designed. www.nbcnews.com/tech/secu…