You should start a blog today by Juhis struck a cord with me and I thought I'd pile on. You should start a blog today.

Like many I blogged a lot in the early 2000's. Those early blogs captured my frame of mind for that period, but they're long gone. Also like many, I stopped blogging sometime after Twitter and Facebook became popular.

Over the years I tried to start back up again. "I should blog more", I'd tell myself. I'd always try to focus on writing "evergreen" content or writing "professional" content and after a short burst, stop.

Discovering the IndieWeb helped remind me that I'm writing for me on my blog. It doesn't have to always be professional all the time. This past year or two regularly blogging again has helped me remember just how magical the internet is. That I can write something in Japan and people find it and respond to it from all over the world – all using open-standards – brings a smile to my face.

Why should you start a blog today?

• Develop better ideas. Many people develop their ideas by writing. They sit down with idea A and as the write about it, they gain some further insight and get idea B, which leads to idea C and so on. None of this would have been possible without sitting down to write. And you're not going to write unless you have a place to do so.


• Be your own reference. When you're debugging a problem at work, chances are you're not the first person to run into that issue. Writing it down on your blog will not only help you gain a better understanding of the problem and help others solve the issue, but also in a year when you run into the same issue, you've got a refresher waiting for you on your blog.


• Honest record of the past. Our memories aren't the best. Having a blog will help you remember just what you thought and felt, for better or for worse, when those events weren't so near.


• Own your data. Twitter is a micro blog. Instagram is a photoblog. But these blogs aren't yours. Yes, you provide the photos. And yes, you provide the witty content. But all of it disappear in an instant at some company's discretion. Putting your data on your own blog protects you and your memories.

It doesn't matter where you start your blog, or how cool your domain is, or how many people read it, or what programming language it's written in. What matters is that you start.

• Happy New Year! I spent New Years Eve like I usually do, going to bed early and waking up before the sun, as per usual. It was great. We went to the local shrine around 10am on new year's day. We were planning to skip the visit or wait until after the holidays, but while walking past the shrine Leo wanted to see the koi and since there was hardly anybody there then we decided to just do it. I'm glad we did because there was a long line an hour later. One thing of note is that because of covid19 they took down the rope with the noise maker at the top that you shake when pray.


• Leo started riding his bicycle (the type without pedals/cranks, so he can practice balancing) a lot this week. He rode it to the grocery store and riding the bicycle was easier than walking, which surprised me. Without the bicycle he likes to run the entire way, but since he doesn't look for cars (despite warning him to stop etc..), I end up having to run/walk with him. With the bicycle his pace is consistent and he is more cautious, but he doesn't want to stop riding so we end up making 3 trips to-and-back from the store.


• Last week I talked about a blogging system. This week I managed to get a base version of it built: 🏔Tanzawa.

My goal with Tanzawa is to make it easy to have an energy efficient home on the internet. It will be the place to store your statuses, your blogs posts, your runs, your checkins, your links, whatever you want. And since it's your home you should have easy access to your data that's stored in a clear and logical manner. It won't be for everyone, but I hope that people will find it useful.

Right now it only supports posting of text statuses. Next up is adding support for images. Once that's finished I plan to start on syndication to Twitter and webmentions before finally moving on to posts, checkins, and other types.