Blogging Like It’s 2000
I started blogging in high school; 25 years ago. My first blog was a LiveJournal. My second blog was on Blogger. When Facebook came out, it replaced my go-to for social sharing, and I began blogging less often. My career path gave me unique skills and now, as you can see, I keep a “personal website.”
If I’m to be honest with you and myself, this hasn’t been very fulfilling. Instead of a personal blog, I’ve been attempting to create content around topics I’ve been interested in. I leaned heavily into AI writing assistance to ensure my content was “good.”
But who cares?
Maybe I’ll keep the old content available. Maybe I’ll archive it. I’m not going to make that decision right now.
There was a day when writing your unfiltered thoughts and journal entries onto a personal blog was pretty normal. Now, the world of content creation is dominated by monetization and audience building.
How many clicks? How many views? How’s the SEO? Did it generate new followers? Did it get engagement? I consider these all intrusive thoughts. They invaded my mind like an occupying army.
When I first started blogging, I was writing for my girlfriend. Then some friends started reading and I wrote for them too. When it became routine for me to blog, I transitioned to Blogger and considered my immediate family by reading audience too.
It’s 2025, and I’m turning 40 this year. I no longer crave any particular persona for myself. I want to write. I want to write my thoughts, feelings, and general going’s on. I don’t need it to perform well. I don’t need it to be well written. I do, however, need to share myself. Like breathing, I need self-expression.
I’m a peculiar human. I know that. I’ve lived a strange life and I have a strange mind. I’ve been a missionary, marketer, advocate, and minister… I feel the weight of the expectation to change hearts and minds, but I equally resent that inner voice.
Don’t believe what I believe. Don’t care about what I care about. I’m not an authority. I am not an influencer.
I’m the DavidJohn.
What I’m drawn to comes and goes. I have seasons. I have tides. I struggle to dedicate myself to one thing because that would make me more of a participant than an agent. Perhaps I have overdeveloped urges to exist adjacent to the norm, rather than in support of it.
I’ve lived long enough now to look back at the patterns of my life and be able to truly know who I am by acknowledging what I am. Ever since the Christopher Nolen Batman films began, I’ve held his quote in my mind “It’s not what’s inside, but what I do that defines me.” I love that quote. It’s profoundly true about my worldview.
My internal world is… a lot. My external world… kind of also a lot. The process of self-actualization comes as naturally as time itself.
This feels like the end of this blog post. I will write more. I’ll write a lot and then I’ll stop for a while. I’ll write weird stuff, emotional stuff, heady stuff, silly stuff. Who knows.
Hi 👋
