A Blog as Journal Highlights
29 August 2026
I've now had this blog for a few months, and while I've updated the book and film lists, I still haven't written anything. During this same time period, I've been very consistent with journaling, which I enjoy. I've been trying to think about why my associations with the two are so different and why I always dread the thought of actually writing something for this blog.
I think it's because I was putting too much pressure on the quality of my posts. I really respect people who craft highly edited, thoughtful articles, and I think subconsciously I was putting those same standards onto myself despite having a very different level of experience. In the same way that I finally became consistent with journaling by setting super low expectations, I want the experience of writing for the blog to feel effortless and enjoyable to work on.
My new idea is to think of the blog as just an extension of my journal. Instead of trying to come up with dedicated "blog articles", I will just occasionally go through my journal, find and interesting idea, edit it slightly by typing it up, and then post it. The journal feels so effortless because it feels authentically me. I always feel some level of restriction when I think about the imaginary audience who will read what I write in the future. But I am posting it publicly, so there does need to be some form of a filter that establishes some boundary between the blog and my journal. My solution is to imagine that I'm only writing the blog for one person (a close friend) to update them on what I've been thinking about recently.
By thinking about writing articles as comparable to catching up and having a phone conversation about what's been going on recently, I hope to remove pressure I put on myself of appealing to a nebulous audience. When talking to my friend I still feel like myself and don't feel like I'm filtering what I'm saying. But I still do filter to a degree, which for a public blog is necessary.
This new workflow means that the blog will function as a highlight reel of my journal. After reading this article, I hope that the practice of going through my journal entries will allow me to refine my writing style and reinforce the things that I like. The blog itself will function like an index and provide a record of how my thinking has changed over time in a more concise and searchable format than a handwritten notebook.
Still, I like that the method of capture is analog. I prefer doing the thinking with a paper notebook because I am a lot less likely to get distracted and because the constraints of the paper mean that I have to let go of the impulse to edit while writing. While journaling I never edit what I'm writing and focus only on capturing my thoughts. The indexing and typing up my handwritten notes that come later serve as a form of minimal editing as I refine and expand (if needed) on what I originally wrote in the journal.
I'm really happy with this new way of thinking about the blog and hope that eliminates some of the friction that was preventing me from being consistent before. At the very least this new system resulted in the article you just read, so in that respect it has already been successful.