I discovered today that my blog post from yesterday didn't post automatically to my Mastodon account—which I assumed was due to an error made. But instead, I found out that Robb Knight's EchoFeed is shutting down. The reasons he lists for discontinuing the service make a lot of sense, but it still makes me sad. Not because of the service I'm losing, but because EchoFeed was one of the first IndieWeb projects I came across after joining omg.lol, and it has always worked effortlessly for me. There are many services that claim to have functionality to crosspost to Mastodon, but they only actually integrate with mastodon.social specifically. I am thankful Robb maintained this project for as long as he did, and he's been a great presence on the IndieWeb overall, and will continue to be. This also was yet another reminder of the ephemeral nature of things—how much I take for granted even as I try to be so aware of how finite and fragile everything is. Why Do I Blog? This finite fragility is a primary motivator for why I blog. Michael Hartley has written recently about how he's making his blog more resilient and musing about what happens to our blogs after we die. These too are not new topics for me, as I have posed the question of how do we prepare for the long web, and have had a /death page on my blog since I began it. I want to leave a mark—maybe the way our ancestors did when they pressed their hands on cave walls with ochre and their blood. And I also want to do good with this absurd one-in-a-trillion existence I've been gifted. How strange it is to be anything at all. I feel as though I've already written a lot about the origins of this blog already, and about how I've been interested in blogging for twenty years ever since Mr. Rehak, my fifth and sixth grade teacher, first introduced our class to Blogspot. How he’d try to engage our young, meagre class in political and philosophical discussions. Despite this though, I can't help myself but to write another post to participate on Robert Birming's AuguStory, where he asks bloggers to answer the questions "how you got into it, where it's taken you, why you're still at it." I don't think there's an academic field called "blogging studies" but there are quite a few interesting papers and scholarly articles examining the hobby. It's been used as an intervention for adolescents and young adults with depression or anxiety, and that it leads to better mental health outcomes by giving people an avenue for social support and improving memory by writing things down. Now, of course these studies should be taken with a grain of salt, and are also often paywalled (oh, how I miss my academic credentials to log in) but I think many consistent bloggers would tell you, anecdotally, that it does provide them a net positive. I think Mr. Rehak understood something which can feel revolutionary—giving his class of children the tools needed to share their thoughts with a global audience. The simple, radical act of believing that what we had to say mattered. Nobody Cares! 😦 One of my earliest blog posts over ten years ago was about shouting into the void, anticipating the fact that my work would not be seen or regarded by many, and how I would continue regardless. Maybe you’ll listen to me, or maybe I’m echoing into an empty cave, it doesn’t really matter. It never did. I know of a blogger that cares deeply about metrics—wanting to be on the front page of Bubbles.town and getting upset about seeing the same recurring bloggers there instead, over and over. This could describe many bloggers—many artists in general. We work hard on something and it deserves recognition, right? No, I think it's much deeper than that. We want to be seen so we can be understood, and we want to be understood so we can be cared for properly. And we want to be cared for because we want to be loved. It is always love, I think, in the end. One way or another. It is demoralizing when you put hours (or days/weeks) into something only to get nothing back in return. As though you are an unrequited lover of the universe. And if your main driving motivator is the outcome you sincerely and justly deserve, the answer is often going to be cruel misery. But? Nobody Cares! 😃 But you can invert the entire thing and find comfort and freedom, I swear. The times I feel most ashamed—when I feel I've really fucked up—what gives me solace is knowing how little people actually care. Nobody is me, except me. What feels like a total disaster to me is just a minor note of interest or brief emotion to someone else. Thank goodness. Everyone else has the luxury to continue on with their own life and the burden of their own suffering and problems. Sure, if you're unlucky enough you'll have somebody become obsessed with you—snark subculture is built on that. Or if you're lucky enough you'll have somebody become infatuated with you. Both of these edge cases, though, have far more to do with the other person than you. People hate and fall in love with all sorts of people; it is a luck of the draw. We cannot control anyone, we cannot will the visitor count to go up, we cannot coerce anybody into genuinely giving a fuck about us. And yet we all deserve to be heard, and seen, and loved, nonetheless. What does any of that have to do with blogging? Well, surprisingly a lot. I'm able to write day after day and share my thoughts with the world far more because of my apathy than my passion. I love writing, but I am uncaring to what happens to it, or the response, far more intensely. If that could possibly make any sense. I can write about anything, I can truly say what I mean, with absolutely no need to mask or pretend. And even in the event I do get backlash in response, so what? It's a blog, for God's sake. People move on. "Kim, there's people that are dying.". The contradictory nature and cognitive dissonance is on full display. I want to contribute good to the world and leave a positive legacy, but I am also unbothered if I fail in doing this—but not unbothered enough to simply give up completely. One of my core values is to think lightly of myself and deeply of the world. I do not take myself seriously, I do not think I'm smart or an authority on any particular thing. I have a phobia towards prestige or power. I am just a yapper that loves to yap. I think all of this is to say I'm weird. It's weird to be self-aware and content with such opposing thoughts, I think. But it's very useful. I let go, and the only thing that remains is my compulsion to write. About Brennan Kenneth Brown Queer Métis writer, cultural critic, and web developer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Treaty 7 territory. Author of nine books and counting, the founder of Fireweed Writing School and Berry House Studio, and of Write Club at Mount Royal University. His work has been cited in Le Monde and other publications. Enjoy this content? Support my work and help me create more: Patreon | Ko-fi | GitHub Sponsors