It takes a lot of effort to keep a blog running.
There was a day last week when I was sitting at my computer, typing away, determined to finish three blog posts on three things I was interested in writing about. I realized I spent the whole afternoon doing just that. Nobody really asked for them, but because I was eager to talk about them, I was animated to write about them. It’s like when I am around friends, and something comes to mind that I want to tell them. I don’t ask for permission to start a conversation. I just do it right away.
And it’s the same here in my blog. When I want to talk about something, I sit down and write it—drafting, editing, adding whatever helps make the point—until it feels ready to share.
And can you imagine the effort it requires to make your ideas cohere into sentences and paragraphs? And do I get paid for blogging? Absolutely no.
But why do I keep doing it if not for money?
It’s actually a question I asked my family out loud over dinner while we were watching a video of a cat replacing the dinosaurs from a Jurassic Park clip:
I remarked that the person behind this video put a lot of work into making this one-minute clip, even though we didn’t ask for it. But did it change us after watching it? It sure did. We had a laugh and thought about the dedication of the creator behind the video. While he earns from having a million views, I don’t think that was why he made it.
And for a moment, while sitting across from my family at the dining table, I thought about why I keep writing here even when I am unsure if anybody would read them at all. Then I remembered: keeping this blog alive makes me feel alive. That must be the reason why I keep coming back here. It’s like leaving my handprint on a rock, as if to say, “I’ve been here.”
I could have chosen microblogging instead. While it’s easy to do that on social media platforms, the mundane stories I usually blog about get easily lost in the noise and the rage that the platforms reward. There’s no easy way to track your archive and link your content, unlike when writing on your own website. I like it here better, like owning a digital garden open for anybody to visit and admire. And visitors leave comments the same way they would in a physical garden—people in the blogging community are kind with their words. Being kind and human actually feels like an unspoken etiquette we live by here, unlike in social media platforms, where people would say things they wouldn’t even dare to say to your face.
How long have I been blogging?
It’s been twelve long years since I started blogging on WordPress, half of which were spent on this domain (www.jessa.blog). While I have deleted my first and abandoned my second (which is still live but on a free domain), I’d be in it for the long haul in this address. Twelve years of digital handprints, and I’m not done yet.
Thanks for reading this 1,502nd blog post!
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