A New Home On The Internet
A few weeks ago I started blogging again and tinkering around on this platform.
I realized quickly that Bear Blog was going to be a great place to create a new home on the internet. I signed up for the premium version of the site, purchased my own domain name and voila—here we are.
For years and years my internet home, to the extent that I had one, was just my Twitter account. I spent a long time building a following and an audience over there. In the peak years of Twitter, I do think the platform was great. It was a genuine net positive in my life. Especially for a use-case like sports and baseball, which was basically the only reason I got on Twitter in the first place.
That's no longer the case. It hasn't been for years. I'm still a victim of the sunk-cost fallacy and can't quite get rid of Twitter (or Bluesky), despite the fact that smart people in the wake of recent events continue to make compelling cases to ditch social media entirely.
I still feel the need to share my work and the work of my colleagues at Baseball America on these platforms. I know there are plenty of people on there who are following me for this exact reason. I still feel an obligation to be there in some capacity.
Instead of actively being on the apps and scrolling the timelines I've pivoted to using tools like Buffer to post links I want to share without engaging in the platforms themselves. Instead of chatting via DMs, I'm encouraging people to just email me if they want to touch base or ask a question.
Moving forward I'm going to be spending the time and effort I used to spend on Twitter here on my own blog.
It's the next step for me after creating a personal newsletter nearly two years ago. An effort to slow things down, to get away from algorithms and to be more intentional with how I'm spending my time on the internet.
I've been reading a lot of the other blogs here at Bear, getting inspired by how people customize their sites, feeling refreshed reading about the Indie Web, learning about CSS, tinkering with my own blog and experimenting with different layouts and customizations.1
I'm still getting things organized and set up how I want.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to be writing about regularly. So far it's been topics like productivity, health, books, and the always popular blogging topic of writing itself. I love ranking things, so I'm probably going to start writing some quick reviews on books, movies and albums. The idea of creating my own custom photo feed as an Instagram replacement is something that's interesting too.
Whatever it is, I'm glad to have a place on the internet that feels like a real home. Something that's worth investing time and energy into. Something that will last. Something that isn't just more slop content on a feed full of ads and rage bait.
Something that's actually mine.
What drew me to Bear in the first place was its straightforward nature, minimal style and focus on writing. So I hope to keep things simple and not get too carried away in the customization department. Ultimately, this is a place for me to write.↩