Does anyone still read blog posts? Follow blog authors? Read individual posts that come across your feed that aren’t published by Politico or Mother Jones? Are blogs still a thing?
It doesn’t seem like anyone reads blogs anymore. It seems like both readers and authors have abandoned blogs in favor of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and new wave journalism platforms like the ones mentioned above.
I am often amazed by the pace at which the online world moves, shifting fluidly from blog posts to Instagram posts to 240-character Tweets to Reels to TikToks. Blogs, it seems, have been left behind. Long-form writing has been abandoned in favor of vlogs; journalists are more likely to be read through their tweets than through their printed articles in the New York Times.
This is totally fine. I don’t have a problem with the death of the blog as a medium of publication. I don’t mind losing my following to Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or YouTube. I really don’t. This blog was formed in anonymity and perhaps anonymity was where it should have stayed. Perhaps the same is true of most, if not all blogs.
Back in the heyday of blogs, we were all giving voice to private thoughts, musings, and creative explorations, offering them up to our supporters as fodder for our audience and as part of the process of honing our talents.
Blogs were private diaries with an IPO, LiveJournal entries with a face to the name. Blogs were a form of exercise, of practice, of sourcing feedback as writers and photographers developed their craft. Blogs were a staging area. Blogs were the jousting tournament before the battle, the war games before the war.
Blogs were where you practiced.
And there is great joy in that, isn’t there? In having a proving grounds, a practice ring, a space in which to exercise your talents before you go public with salable goods or finished products.
I think there’s value in that. There’s value in watching others practice before you enter the final stage. There’s value in feedback and critique and learning what resonates. There’s value in acknowledging that this is part of the process.
Although the blog may be dead, voiceless, audience-less, I’m going to resurrect mine. This will be a space for meditations on career, on leadership, on wine, on writing, on growth, on creativity, and on process. These meditations may not be polished. They may not be pretty. They may not always even be enjoyable for others to read. But they will be mine. And maybe every now and again, one of these meditations will resonate with my community.
I won’t hold my breath. And I won’t base my practice on anyone else’s approval. This is for me, and for me alone.
I am setting my voice free. I am giving myself permission to write on literally anything, anytime, as I did in the beginning. The title and tagline for this blog is “The Z-Axis: Musings in the 3rd Dimension”. I give myself permission to voice these musings, explore new dimensions of thought, and share my explorations, whether they find an audience or not. I give myself permission to publish them anytime, any day, regardless of whether that time is well suited to publishing a new post. I give myself permission to create, to explore, to reflect, to meditate on topics that interest me. No audience required.
I am not building a platform.
I am practicing my craft.
I wish you all well in your creative, entrepreneurial, and adventurous journeys towards a more complete and joyful expression of yourselves.
Kindest regards,
Amira
Featured Image by Cody Doherty; sourced from http://www.unsplash.com.
The Z-Axis 
My experience is that followers will just quickly press Like and move on. No comments. I dont believe people are really reading blogs much. They seem to care more about getting followers for their own blog. Maybe I’m wrong.
I have noticed people commenting more on the post on the social media links. I would guess because visibility for the commenter is higher on social media – where it’s public – than on someone else’s blog roll. I certainly don’t read blogs as much as I used to!
You are absolutely right. I know MY blog was left on the battlefield to wither and die. I didn’t even think about it as I went on with my life and other creative endeavours … your post has stimulated a sense of grief for a thing I once loved and poured my energy into has come to be so neglected. RIP little blog.
Have fun journaling in cyberspace… maybe I’ll even read a few! Lol 😆