Ok, now that it's been just over a month since I created this new blog I think I'm finally beginning to understand what I want it to look like.
Before I continue, I have to say that I experimented with Medium. At the first sight I was strongly attracted to Medium's simplicity, which supposedly took every bit of distraction away leaving a blank 'sheet' for one to write on. Pure creativity, no shenanigans. And I was happy with the way things worked - no customisation to worry about, minimum formatting, and so on. I even got a few pageviews and reads, too.
Soon enough, however, I began feeling a bit intimidated and plain annoyed with it. Looking through the suggested posts on the main page it appeared like the whole platform was inhabited by columnists, book-writers and overall some sort of professionals that came there to share their wisdom with the world.
My suggested/recommended posts feed was filled with posts, or articles rather, along the lines of "Why <something everyone does> is a bad idea", "How to <make, improve, excel at> <some product or process> in few easy steps", "Why you shouldn't be doing <something that you do>", "What mistake has <a famous person from a specialised field> made", and many many other variations. A lot of them screamed of pretentiousness and fakeness around us, and how things like travelling have succumbed to being a vain rather than mind-opening activity. And although I did agree with a few of the ideas myself, in its entirety the content on that platform turned out to be very different from what I always understood by blogging.
Just to be clear, to me the idea behind it is probably one of the best ideas ever when it comes to blogging - minimalistic design with minimum distractions to help focus on writing. What could be better? But from what it looks like, using Medium has turned into somewhat of a 'fashion statement' screaming "I chose to leave mediocre mainstream platforms in favour of this professional-looking site where everything I say will look important". Or it is simply an article-writing platform.
I just think that blogging needs to be a bit more personal, a bit more engaging rather than simply tossing dry instructions or ideas at the reader. I believe that a bond should be formed between the blogger and the reader, where the story is told or a thought is shared, and where the reader follows the story and the whole blog just like reading chapters of an infinite book.
What I try to achieve in my blog is to record whatever I would put in a personal journal with slight censorship correction, obviously. Stories? Maybe. Maybe even some creative writing, but I cannot yet say for sure. Hopefully something of interest to you as the reader. But I want to make it personal. I want to make it a continuation of myself, if I may say so. I want to share because I want to share and for no other reason.
I think the point has been made, so take care for now!
E.V.
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