Three pillars of my blogging philosophy

This is part of an ongoing series about how this site is made.

This site started with just one tiny post. Seven years ago, while Q and I were vacationing in Shanghai, I noticed something at the Disney Resort there that I felt was worth telling others about. With that first post, arun.is was born. I kept iterating on the site, publishing more than a hundred posts, starting a newsletter, and going through quite a few redesigns and migrations across stacks.

At first, I had no unifying philosophy for why I continued. It was fun and challenging and that seemed to be enough. Yet, I wondered from time to time why I kept doing it. It didn’t provide much financially, and very few of the people I personally knew seemed to care.

Now, seven years later, I’ve started to understand more clearly why and how arun.is exists.

I chatted with Manuel Moreale on this topic earlier in the year on People and Blogs. While that conversation was about the nuts and bolts of my blog, this is about the three pillars of my blogging philosophy.

Independence

I own my platform

There are many reasons to own your own online presence. For some it’s cheaper. For others it allows them to avoid censorship. For me, it’s about self expression. I don’t want this site to be a set of words fit into a predefined template. I want it to be a reflection of what I find beautiful and interesting.

Given that I believe Marshall McLuhan’s idea that the medium is the message, it’s a no brainer that I must own every aspect of this site, from how it is distributed, to the tech stack, and down to the typography.

I don’t monetize

When listening to people like Ben Thompson or Casey Newton talk about their success as full time writers, I can find myself daydreaming about doing the same. Once I come back down to earth, I remember the reality. I don’t write that often. I’m much too interested in building technology products. Plus, I tried writing for a gadget blog for a few months and didn’t like it.

Being upfront with myself that this site doesn’t need to provide meaningful income frees me to focus on its current function as a creative sandbox. It also keeps the site free of ads and paywalls.

I embrace obscurity

Since I don’t care about monetization, I also don’t really care about the sheer volume of visitors. If obscurity is one side, the other side of the coin is focus. My site as a lighthouse meant to attract likeminded souls. Focus makes that light brighter.

Over the years, this blog has facilitated new relationships and friendships with people that I otherwise would have never met.

I make it personal

Ben Thompson often talks of the barbell effect where a market can only sustain a few heavyweights and many small fry with no one in the middle. The media space is playing out this way.

I don’t consider myself a true player in the media landscape, but I do identify with the small fry. The power that they have is a level of focus that the heavyweights could never get down to.

For me, the posts that are the most fun, challenging, and ultimately valuable to others, have been the ones that I have been personally obsessed with.

I discover, not develop, my voice

For some time, I used to be worried that I didn’t have a coherent or polished style. I would compare my posts to a blog I admired and could see that mine felt more scatter shot or unrefined.

I tried and failed many times to sit down and establish a style once and for all. Over time though, I noticed that a style has started to emerge organically. It encompasses everything from the header images, to the structure of my writing, to the way I edit my photos.

Creativity

I don’t “stay in my lane”

Perhaps this is a side effect of having worn a lot of hats in the past, but I don’t see a lane or beat that I must confine my writing to. It shifts the common thread among my work from the specific topic to the lens I see through.

As a result, I make surprise connections between disparate topics. For example, my post about Shanghai’s automotive metamorphosis started as a simple photoessay, but became an observation of Chinese technological advancement over many decades.

I embrace the medium (hypertext, links, multimedia)

Blogs are native to the web, which affords a very different form of consumption than traditional print media. I love weaving in video, illustration, and animation into my otherwise static posts. For example, my post on the Apple Card extensively uses video clips that illustrate ideas much better than static images could.

I work gradually

The great thing about websites is that they are software, a medium that lends itself perfectly to incremental improvement. Aside from a select few posts like my Apple Watch face piece or my Xbox design history, most posts are quite short and take a few days from start to finish.

For those smaller pieces, thinking small makes getting started easier. It also encourages regular reflection and improvement.

I revisit and reference my old posts

Over time, I have started to see this site more as an interconnected body of work rather than a list of independent posts (though not quite Zettelkasten level of internal linking). This helps me break larger ideas down into self contained posts that I can then link between. When I feel an idea is too big and fractal to fit into one post, I can slice of just a piece to tackle and leave the rest for later.

I embrace imperfection

I acknowledge the gap between my ability and my taste. It has certainly narrowed compared to before. Yet, it remains and I assume it will remain forever.

By embracing imperfection, I give myself the permission to keep making and improving, which is the only way to close the gap.

Connection

I disable comments

I don’t support comments on my blog for a few reasons. First, I want to avoid the cost of filtering spam and content moderation. Second, I’d like to encourage thoughtful responses by raising the amount of friction required to respond. I already participate in social media, which is the perfect place for more ephemeral, short-form conversation. For responses to my posts, I prefer you reply via email or by responding on your own blog.

I own my audience relationship

It’s important to me that no one stands between me and you. I don’t want a algorithmic feed deciding when you see my work. I don’t want to lose touch because a platform changed the way it operates.

Hence, I support RSS for anyone who wants to keep up via an RSS reader. I also send out my newsletter, which has become a home for my smaller, more transient thoughts and the interesting things I find on the web.

I write for myself

A lot of my writing starts with curiosity. A burning question arises that I must find the answer to. I let my curiosity guide me as I learn the answer. Then, I write for the previous ignorant version of me. This process solidifies my understanding while also hopefully providing value for others interested in the same topics.

This process works even in my photoessays. The act of having to thread together disparate photos into stories uncovers memories that I though were long lost. I end up finding hidden meaning or beauty in the places I visited.

I engage with others

I’m inspired by the work of others, which in turn is inspired by the work of yet more people. Currently, I often link to or attribute other’s ideas’. Going forward, I’d like to view my work more as a conversation with other creators and more heavily quote and respond to them.

Of pixels and prose

Looking back at the last seven years, I have realized that this site has become more than just a collection of posts. It’s an extension of myself and a free space to explore ideas. The process of exploration has lead me to improve how I write and think.

A focus on independence and authenticity is what has made this site an extension of myself instead of a standalone entity. The tradeoff is that this site provides very little financial value. Though, I’m happy to give that up in light of the real friendships I have made.

Looking forward, I hope to continue experimenting and refining what has become my most important form of self-expression. Seven years ago, I couldn’t have guessed where my blog would have taken me by now. Hence, I don’t know where it will take me in the future.

I do know that I’m eternally grateful to all of you that have followed my work and written in.

Thank you.

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Thanks to Q for reading drafts of this.