ain’t it fun

I only write in my blog for fun, and when I make it more important than just having fun, I really get in my own way. Yeah, I announce the cool things that I get to do, the cons I’m attending, I share my work and my podcast, and things that are work-adjacent, but if it isn’t fun to sit here and write about something, I just don’t do it. I won’t even go into how frustrating it is when I feel like I have to force it.

And I forget, every single time, how much I enjoy posting in my blog, how much I enjoy interacting with anyone who reads it in comments, how good it feels to make the human connections that, ironically, don’t seem to happen on social media, on account of all the bots and trolls and endless efforts to disrupt our peace.

This might be the most important and least-followed principle of internet culture: the thing you’re doing should actually be fun.

Which seems obvious, but we keep forgetting it.

Most people online don’t seem to actually enjoy themselves.

So why are they doing it?

Why do they keep posting?

Likely, some combination of: professional obligation (it became their brand), addiction to variable rewards (occasional validation amid mostly tedious interactions), identity protection (they’re Someone Who Writes Online), and simple habit.

The trap works like this: You start blogging for fun → people read it → you start thinking it’s Important → you optimize for engagement/influence/brand → it stops being fun → you quit or do it resentfully → eventually you remember it used to be fun → repeat.

There’s a simple lesson here: keep asking yourself “am I enjoying this?”

If the answer is consistently no, that’s important information.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​