I’ve often thought about explicitly sharing this blog around. After all, who goes through the effort of jotting their thoughts down and designing a website if it’s not going to be seen by anyone. It would be simple for me to put a link in my Instagram bio. I own the domain, and I’m sure it would catch people’s attention. Sure, you’d have to be interested enough in me to click on my profile, but by that point scrolling through a website a little would be no trouble at all. However, I cannot bring myself to do it. It’s not like I don’t want this blog to be seen, I would love it if I could post something here and have people reach out to me to talk about the things I’m interested in. In fact, if you asked me if I had a website, I would spare no time telling you that I do in fact own the domain for my very own name.1 However, blogs don’t tend to come up in conversation, and I refuse to bring up my website unless it is asked on. You might think I’m shameful of my website, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve spent somewhere around 20 hours fine-tuning styling, design, and function for the base of the website itself, add that to the time put into writing and the time commitment grows larger and larger. There may be some small part of me that finds it scary sharing my writing, but with a blog I don’t have to know who views it or who doesn’t. I love this blog, not just as an outlet but as everything it stands for. I’m an engineering student, we don’t normally have blogs that are about something other than engineering, but I keep this blog as a way of exploring my other passion for writing. But, at the end of the day, I don’t think I will ever be able to share this blog.
Perhaps this is entirely just me, but for as far back as I can remember I have never been keen on drawing attention to myself. It’s not that I didn’t want to be seen, but that I wanted that viewing to be natural. I’ve had my fair share of bragging, but never to a point of excess—it may have been over a grade but never more. To me the act of being discovered is more powerful than just showing someone your work and expecting a compliment. It’s something that played out when I applied to college. For the first time you are expected to brag about yourself, and to someone who does not brag it felt weird. The whole time I kept wishing that each college could just view my accomplishments without me having to put them out there for them to see. I obviously overcame that hurdle when it comes to admissions, but I still follow my dogma of not showing off in every other circumstance. I simply wish everyone wanted to view my blog without me influencing them in any way. However, the world doesn’t work like that. If you want to be seen you must put yourself on display, beyond just putting a domain name in some DNS servers.
It’s for that reason I plant little mentions of my blog around. When it comes up that I’ve been writing the blog can be mentioned, when it comes up what I do creatively the blog can be mentioned; only when it appears naturally can I bring it up. In the way I plant a digital garden, I plant vines across the world of mentions to my blog. One day, when there’s enough posts to worth some merit, I may preach my blog to everyone and anyone, but who knows when or if that day will come.
If you are reading this, I’m glad you found me. Feel free to stick around a while.
This could very well appear in its own fully fledged out thought, and it likely will some day, but I do think everyone should make a blog. ↩