If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.
— Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
I’m late to the discovery of @annahavron’s wonderful Analog Office blog. Her Lumpers vs Splitters post on whether to keep one notebook for everything or many specialized notebooks is pure gold. Anna could write about staplers, and I would read it. Full disclosure: I am and forever will be a lumper.
The Rose Reading Room at the New York Public Library. It’s just a few subway stops from our apartment, so I’m able to spend time here often. What an inspiring place for a reader or writer!
Wednesday, May 7, 2025 • 1 min read
One of the things I love about keeping a journal is how a past entry can transport me so completely back in time to that moment. Here’s a passage from my journal on this day eight years ago:
I try to soak this in - the goldfinches perched on the feeders, fluttering and pestering one another for the best feeding spot, Puget Sound so blue and ruffled, distorted by the heat of the fire, the sight and smell of fresh cut grass, so green and healthy, the sounds of birds in every direction announcing their delight that spring has sprung. Ah yes.
Reading this, I am back on the porch of our old house, basking in the newfound sun after a long Pacific Northwest winter. I hear the birdsong. I see the ruffled waves on the blue water.
My life is so different now. I am worlds away from where I was back then. But in the space of a paragraph, I am transported.
Savor the moments. Write what you feel and see in a journal. Write something every day if you can. Practice time travel.
My blog had its tenth birthday last July, and I forgot to celebrate: Why Blogs Matter
Monday, September 9, 2024 • 1 min read
I’m trying out a new note-taking method. I’ve switched from Field Notes to this custom index card holder. I prefer taking notes on index cards, but I’m always misplacing them or can’t find one when I need it. This “book” solves that. I moved the ring to the top right side to accommodate my left-handedness, so it’s comfortable for writing. I take notes on books or writing ideas, and when I’m ready to process or write, I pull out the cards and arrange and rearrange them on my desk. I’ve always loved the tactile and visual creativity of note cards for deeper thinking and structure. And now I don’t have to scan through my notebook scribbles to find all the various notes I’ve taken on a project or a book. So far, so good!
Does anyone else use index cards this way?
From Are Bookstores Just a Waste of Space? (New Yorker):
Two-thirds of the books released by the top-ten trade publishers sell fewer than a thousand copies, and less than four per cent sell more than twenty thousand.
I knew that bestselling authors dominate book sales, but these are humbling statistics for anyone contemplating the Herculean effort of writing and publishing a first book.
After three good years with Craft, I’ve moved my reading notes and PKM to Bear. I really love Bear’s simplicity and hidden power on both Mac and iOS. No futzing, just my words. Blog post: Bear 2 for Writing and Thinking.
Sunday, October 15, 2023 • 4 min read
How I fell into a trance with the Indy blog service, Micro.blog, is a curious story.
I received a renewal invoice from HostGator notifying me that the cost of my bi-annual web hosting service was going up 58%. Quick math informed me that I was paying too much for a personal blog. Surely there must be a less expensive alternative? That question led me down many paths, most leading me in circles.
Moving to Wordpress.com seemed like a good idea until I realized its plug-in-enabled service made even HostGator’s renewal price seem like a steal. I considered Medium and Substack, but their continual pestering readers to subscribe to their respective services didn't mesh with my belief in the value of an open internet. Many other competing web hosting services offered attractive short-term teaser rates but would require constant leapfrogging from service to service to remain affordable.
One service — Micro.blog — caught my attention briefly. $5 a month for hosting your blog with your own domain, a federated service that automated cross-posting to all sorts of other sites, and a blogging platform that allowed you to publish both long essays and short tweet-like updates to a timeline with no ads and no algorithms. No spam, no trolls. No fake news. Just old-fashioned blogging.
As I dug deeper for alternatives, I was reminded that HostGator not only supplied my personal blog but also housed my boat blog, our family website, their respective registered domains, and, importantly, email accounts for my entire family. Canceling HostGator would be a considerable disruption. Moving to a competing hosting service would be a chore—a big one.
After a week of researching my website options, I called HostGator about the price increase. The call took five minutes of mild negotiating. By the time I hung up, they had reduced the increase by two-thirds. It was still going up 17%, but given the cost of other services and the work involved in switching, I felt I was getting a bargain. I would keep my blog on WordPress with HostGator for another two years.
But, I kept thinking about Micro.blog.
Like many, I've grown distrustful of the big social media sites. I have accounts on most, but I rarely look at them or post to them. An impersonator tried to take over my Instagram account a few weeks ago. My Twitter (X?!) feed is filled with all sorts of craziness. What happened to human civility? Facebook is all ads, and God help me if I click on any of them. When a service is free, you and your posts are the product. That's Business 101. I know there is still a lot of good on these sites, but it’s buried so deep that slogging through it fills me with despair. With all the heady promises that technology would bring us closer together, how did we end up here?
Maybe, I mused, I still needed Micro.blog after all. What if, alongside my longer posts on my regular blog, I shared the updates on Micro.blog that I used to post on social media? I kept thinking: no ads and no algorithms. No spam, no trolls, no likes, no push for followers, no sensational posts designed to go viral. Nothing goes viral on Micro.blog, so there's no need to push fake news—just honest thoughts, pictures, and videos amidst a community of like-minded creators.
What ultimately convinced me to sign up with Micro.blog was learning about its founder, Manton Reece ([@manton](https://micro.blog/manton)). I read his blog posts about the purpose of Micro.blog. I perused his manifesto on Indie Microblogging. I watched a few videos of him being interviewed, looking to me like a young Steve Jobs, clearly brilliant, explaining the social good of the service and how he and his team are trying to make the world a better place through this technology. His scorn for traditional social media is palpable. I liked him at once. He's one of the good guys. You can tell. How could I not support this cause?
So, I have joined Micro.blog ([@robertbreen](https://micro.blog/robertbreen)). You can follow me there by clicking the menu link at the top of my home page at robertbreen.com, or you can see a summary of my latest updates on the right sidebar on most of the pages on my website. Essays and longer posts will still appear here on the regular blog. Shorter posts and updates on my travels, the books I'm reading, and the daily happenings in my life will hit Micro.blog. I hope you'll have a look. And who knows? You might be the next to fall under the curious trance of Micro.blog and its mission to save blogging.