Bear Blog Question Challenge
I've seen plenty of people take part in Ava's Bear Blog Question Challenge since starting up my own site here at Bear.
I'd always intended to take part myself, but wanted to refrain from doing so initially.
Instead I wanted to create a blogging practice of my own, without being reliant on meta-blogging or reply posts or other things like that. I've been blogging for a year now, though, so it's time to take the plunge.
1. Why did you make the blog in the first place?
I started this blog because I missed the feeling of the internet from the 2000s, when blogging and individual sites were commonplace and felt fun. I missed the pre-algorithm years and wanted to get further away from social media and back into the sort of environment that existed when I started writing online as a teenager.
I also realized I wanted a kind of home on the web that was more than a Twitter or Instagram account, and could be something that lasted and was actually owned by me. I realized I should probably own my own domain and then started to think about starting a blog again.
2. Why did you choose Bearblog?
I was about to just re-start an old Wordpress site I had, but after spending too much time messing around with a theme and being unsatisfied with the platform I stumbled upon Bear.
I went down an internet rabbit hole of YouTube videos about different blogging platforms, then started to see lots of content about the IndieWeb and finally discovered this article from Derek Sivers about now pages.
He recommended Bear and I checked out the platform. The minimalism and writing-first nature resonated with me—I created an account immediately.
3. Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Yes, I've used a few of the big ones. Blogger, Blogspot, Wordpress, Medium.
But almost all of my blogging in the past was baseball-focused—not the first-person writing I am doing more of here in this space. My goal was always to become a sports writer and my old blogging efforts reflected that.
Once I "made it" and started writing about baseball as a full-time job with Baseball America, my desire to blog outside of that diminished for a long time.
4. Do you write your posts directly in the editor or in another software?
I write my blog posts in Obsidian, then just copy and paste into the editor. For shorter-form pieces like my notes and photos, I will write those directly in the Bear editor.
5. When do you feel most inspired to write?
I don't have a real set time.
I find that I'm constantly thinking about writing in some capacity, and I'll mostly write when I have the energy, focus or spare time for it. I tend to have a few blog ideas simmering around in my head at all times. Occasionally I'll throw some blog topics into a note in Obsidian to make sure I re-visit them in the future.
I'll write early in the morning, in the middle of the day, in the afternoon, late at night—it just depends what else is going on in life.
6. Do you publish immediately after writing or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
On this blog I publish immediately about 99% of the time. The "simmer" time for me is mostly spent thinking through what I want to say in a blog post. Once I actually sit down to write something, I will write the entire thing through with minor editing and structuring in that phase.
Once I'm done, I will put the piece in the Bear editor, add the tags I need and then save the piece as a draft to see how it looks on the site. Then I'll read the piece through again and do a more thorough edit.
I find that the change in visual is helpful to catch typos and other edits that might not immediately jump out to me in the Obsidian editor while writing.
7. Your favorite post on your blog?
It's probably A Brief Primer On The 20-80 Scale.
It's my ranking system of choice for all things, and because I love to rank things here on the site, it's important to be able to reference when I am putting my overall grades on different things.
8. Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, changing the tag system, etc.?
I tend to tinker too much as it is, so I'm hoping to not do much in the way of site design in the near future. I'm happy with the current design and the way I organize the site with three different tag types (blogs, notes, photos).
I'd like to continue backfilling the site with my old Instagram photos so those are fully backed up, but generally I just want to keep writing and creating things here on the site. I love the craft of writing and appreciate this blog as a space to get myself more reps in a different style of writing from my everyday work.
I want this to be a place that lasts and ages alongside me.
One of my newfound pet peeves are personal blogs that have a ton of broken links, so I suppose one future plan is just being committed to not having broken links and dead pages here. I've got a lifetime membership with Bear and plan to have this blog stick around.