Bye, bye, Bear Blog!
Almost a year ago, I decided to give blogging a try. I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing my posts (I put a lot of effort into them), but seeing how little traction my writings got was usually disappointing.
My best-appreciated blog post was very short; I suspect that was part of its appeal. What I consider to be my best post was very niche, so I understand why it didn't get many upvotes.
After that one, though, I tried to write about things that I expected to be appealing to a larger audience, but I always seemed to fail to reach them. I am either interested in things that other people don't care about, or I haven't figured out how to make those things interesting to them. Either way: life is finite, and you shouldn't spend much time on things that don't have a decent return on investment.
As I wrote, I enjoyed the researching and writing, but if the enjoyment I get from those is the entire return, I might as well store my writings in an Obsidian vault and save myself the yearly 58 euro (incl. VAT) subscription to Bear Blog. 😉
In three weeks, on the 18th of August, my subscription will expire and that will be it for me. I would like to use this (probably last [1]) blog post to thank Khoaly for their kind words. Without them, I probably would have considered the experiment a bit of a failure. Now, I don't.
Thank you!
EDIT: Several people suggested I should write without reader engagement in mind. The thing is, I don't write the same way when I know others will read it. If I'm writing only for myself, I'll research something until I'm satisfied and stop when it's "good enough." If I'm writing knowing someone else might read it, I'll spend much more time researching, fact-checking, polishing, and revising. That's a much bigger investment. If only a handful of people end up reading the result (and that's perfectly understandable; I also hesitate before opening a very long post!), it's hard to justify putting in that extra effort. Since I have other hobbies I enjoy, like reading and programming, I'd rather spend my limited time on the ones that feel more rewarding.
[1] I still have three blog posts waiting but I don't expect to finish them within the remaining weeks.