Joan Westenberg’s blog post this week is such a perfect start to 2026. It sets the tone for what we should keep working on throughout the year. Just picking out a few things to quote… On the value of exploring ideas through longer blog posts:
You can write a post working through an idea, acknowledge in the post itself that you’re not sure where you’ll end up, and invite readers to think alongside you. You can return to the topic weeks later with updated thoughts. The format accommodates the actual texture of thinking, which is messy and recursive and full of wrong turns.
One of many disappointments from the rise of social media and hot takes is that it sometimes feels that our most nuanced blog posts get over-simplified when quoted online. I’ve had what I thought were pretty balanced essays reframed on Mastodon by people who seemed to be responding to a summary of the post rather than the post itself.
Maybe that’s not a problem that needs fixing. People are entitled to their opinion, and negativity and hate spread quickly online. But I think longer blog posts naturally trend toward thoughtfulness and away from the click-driven performative nature of social media.
Continuing with Joan:
If you’re trying to build a body of work, or to create something that will outlast the platform of the moment, a blog is simply a better tool.
I could not agree more with this. I wrote about it in my chapter Permanence in Indie Microblogging. It’s a topic I return to again and again.
Just yesterday, I linked to one of my posts from 2002. There wasn’t anything special about the post except that it captured something that would be lost by now if not written down. That blog post predates not just Twitter / X but also Facebook. Today it’s hard to imagine the pre-Facebook web, and yet it persists because of its simplicity: a domain name, text, and RSS.
Start a blog. Start one because the practice of writing at length, for an audience you respect, about things that matter to you, is itself valuable. Start one because owning your own platform is a form of independence that becomes more important as centralized platforms become less trustworthy.
The call to action is clear. Get a domain name and start writing. Short posts, long posts. It’s okay if you haven’t figured everything out yet. With time it’ll all come together.
