And I gotta say, these past three years or so I've learnt my lesson to do so. Showing up is exactly the only thing you can control in life.
I used to not be able to relate to my fellow college mates whom people talked about because they "disappeared" from college. You know the ones, not attending classes but still have their names attached in the academic registry.
Until I become one of them.
There are various reasons for it to happen, and I don't speak for anyone else, but in my case it's mostly personal and internal struggle. A struggle to mingle with new people. A struggle to learn completely new things. A struggle to make peace with myself for not being perfect.
Over time, I managed to pull through with the help of friends who were all going through the same stuff. Apparently, nobody actually knows what they're doing, so all you can do is... you guessed it, show up.
It's just stoicism, isn't it? Focus only on things within your control.
You don't know for sure if you're going to get the job or not, you can only show up to the interview and try your best. You don't know if your You don't know for sure if your writing will get the attention it deserves or not, you can only consistently write.
And the act of showing up itself will lead you to a whole new experience. Unexpected things. And a couple of expected ones, I presume.
So why am I writing this?
Probably to ask myself, if you think showing up is important, why haven't you been doing so, as the owner of this blog?
Good question, my friend. (nanya sendiri jawab sendiri)
Ironically, it's not like I stopped writing. I've just stopped posting.
There's not a single deciding factor. Maybe it's the lack of time and energy from my day job. Maybe it's the demotivation from the declining viewers' count. Maybe I just no longer find ranting in blog posts fulfilling and tried more serious things but never ended up finishing them. Maybe I began to think that spending so much time and energy to write isn't worth it anymore.
Or maybe Blogspot is no longer the satisfactory platform for me anymore.
I've been considering switching to more "modern", mobile-friendly blogging platforms with built-in audience. For my mini-essays or observation pieces related to my media interests like book or music reviews. Perhaps platforms like Medium or Substack.
I already gave a shot at Substack, setting up my pages (and projected topics / sections), and posting a couple of writings. But the menu is just so unintuitive and full of unnecessary bullcraps like subscriber newsletter setups, un-removable "podcast" section on my page, "social" posts and pages, and so on. It's like Medium with extra bullshit.
Medium sounds great because of its emphasized focus on writing, built-in audience (although with stiff competition), modern user interface, plugged-in article images, and mobile-view support. The way it's built makes it feels like it's supporting "branching" ideas like the ones my head usually makes up. Since I've tried signing up for it, I've been getting newsletter emails for topics of my interests, like app designs and writing. That's where I get the idea of how people generally write on the platform (one-sentence paragraphs and clickbait-y oh I'm sorry, it's hooks titles).
I love Blogspot because it's been a safe space for me. It acts like a dedicated little quirky corner for me and my antics in the vast realm of the internet, since the dawn of 2009.
But the internet has shifted. Everyone keeps in touch through visual-based social media platforms now. Why write (and read) long-ass paragraphs when you can just snap a picture and post it for everyone (you filter to allow) to see, in an instant?
I used to plug links to my blog on Twitter (oh I'm sorry it's X now) whenever I published a new post, where I was my authentic self and my follower friends were highly tolerable to my antics. Usually when I tweet (oh I'm sorry it's post now) a hyperlink to my new post, it turns into an intuitive 'widget' thing that people would easily click, especially if I added thumbnails.
Now the platform policy doesn't really support any external links that will take viewers to another website. Whenever I tried to tweet a Substack link or blogspot link, the (recently implemented) view metric feature shows virtually zero viewers.
Probably also something to do with the seemingly declining trustworthiness of Blogspot. I've done a couple AI-labeling gig jobs, and all the Blogger websites I encountered had only shady contents (SEO keywords spam, copy-pasted articles, etc). So maybe my 15-years-old blog with nothing but my original rant contents is also mushed together with those shitshow.
So... yeah, I'm not really sure what's next. I'll probably still rant here every now and then, and shoot my shot at writing more topical things somewhere more audience can read them. I'll keep updating!
Cheers.
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