Blaugust Begins

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to firmly exit the platforms. At first I was going to do some kind of cross-posting but most don’t have an exposed API or any kind of application password type setup. So right now, my blog only cross-posts to Bluesky and Mastodon. But what I’m finding more and more is that maybe I don’t really even need those.

I’m coming to a rather happy realization that bloggers who still blog are a particularly shaped kind of people. What I’ve gathered so far is that they value freedom along multiple axes, some easy ones to spot:

1. Freedom to shape your site any way you want – almost all platforms force you to post in a particular way, the way is good for the platform because it drives revenue. The way is not always good for you because it limits how you can choose to express yourself.
2. Freedom to not care about engagement – this one isn’t obvious when you first start browsing the open web. Many sites are very quiet, the ones that post regularly, are personal updates. However, I came across this site called bubbles which seemed to be a reddit/hackernews combo. I visited when there was self-realization underway. People had started to post in a way that gave you more visibility and then there were self-correcting posts where on reflection people didn’t want that. Upvote revulsion.
3. Freedom to own your content – many platforms make it difficult to export content. What’s worse is that apart from places like WordPress, the exported content is almost useless because it is all in the shape of the platform. To convert it to another platform or even your website would require a lot more work. The easiest solution is to never get trapped. Which I completely agree with.

The title, Blaugust is a month for blog post writing, not as intense as NaNoWriMo I imagine, but intensity is not the point, presence is. I’ve been writing pretty consistently for the past year + now, but most of it has been essays. Few have been easy, bloggy, type posts. So, I’ll be trying those out this month.

This is the post to understand more about Blaugust, there is an also a nice discord community if you’d like, but you are free to do as much or as little as you’d like. The point is to just write.

#Blaugust2026