2026-08-04 02:30:00
I love my bearblog, I really do, but I'm still not sure I've found my online home. I create domains and domains, but never maintain them. Then I pop back on over to bear and wish I could make it work. Perhaps I'm just not meant to be part of the online space anymore.
I miss the community of the old internet so much; the days when I used to pour my heart out to my Livejournal and the friends in my computer would write back to me. The days when I used to spend hours making blends and graphics in Photoshop and code them up into a very un-mobile friendly website, by hand.
Everything is too perfectly polished today. Social media has ripped away true connection and I don't know how to get it back.
2026-08-03 22:14:00
Today I visited Biltema, one of Sweden's biggest hardware and home improvement stores.
Everywhere there were people, mostly men, looking at tools. Holding them with a look on their face that said, "Hmm, maybe this could be useful."
I have a feeling that quite a few of those tools will never be used, and the projects they were meant for will never be finished. I see it all the time when doing house inspections. Shiny, expensive tools lying around and "a work in progress" behind every other door.
Lots of preparation, very little progress. Calling procrastination planning.
It doesn't have to be just physical homes, digital homeowners do it too. Planning, reading about different blogging platforms, comparing writing tools, making lists of ideas... all justified as "important work".
It doesn't matter how exclusive the brush is, or how expensive the paint was. The only thing that really matters is getting the paint on the wall.
2026-08-03 22:05:00
I'm so sorry for blogging about blogging, you can skip this one but there IS a good cat photo at the end lmao
As usual, there will be unrelated photos sprinkled about my post because I'm highly visual; enjoy some birds on a power line from the photo backlog!
I’ve mentioned before that I've gone full hog into RSS and things like Bubbles.town with the intent of reading more blogs which, on the whole has been great! But there's been a steady increase in that space of bloggers being...how to put this, like - incredibly weird about Bearblog. In all directions.
I'm kind of oversimplifying but I keep seeing posts specifically (despite my attempts to filter out blogs posts about blogging) pertaining to Bear as a "community" and like, how the discover feed has malice apparently, and like, yes - metablogging is lame as hell and I'm fucken sorry for even participating, but this has been so prominent I kinda just started writing before I even realized what I was doing. Being part of the problem I guess!
Up front, I’ll be honest with you:
Lamenting that a post got "shadowbanned" from the discovery feed or that there's some sort of "Bear conspiracy" where some blogs get all the attention while others wither in obscurity without upvotes, or that there's discrimination against bloggers using the default Bear theme instead of dressing it up, or that a blog on Bear is better (or worse!!) than a blog that's self hosted - this is all fucking WILD, dude!!
I guess if you are blogging for a living or some financial gain and it’s fucking imperative that you have as many eyes on your posts as possible....well, then first off I’m sorry - wouldn't wish that on my enemies, but also that could explain the behavior...maybe?
And like, I say this as an outsider because writing into the void is what I’ve been doing since I got here and it's been way WAY healthier for me than chasing metrics and trends and tracking “readership”. I maintain that a large portion of online society, even those who have 'escaped' the primary social media hegemony to the fringes of 'indieweb' have still been broken by the social media plague of "number go up".
What can I say, Eggbug fixed me
I don't wanna be reductive but Cohost ("COHOST MENTIONED" ALARM SOUNDS) helped me not be that person any more after YEARS of meticulously tracking Twitter stats and website hits and band metrics; since starting this blog I’ve looked at my Bear analytics...maybe twice? Ever?
The other thing is that (and maybe this is all short-sighted of me) I think it's helpful that I don't view Bearblog as a social media platform in that way. Like sure - there is the (seemingly insidious!!) discover feed and there’s a fair amount of community around code addons and other resources specifically for this platform, but like...two people using the same blog engine to write to their audiences (or the void!!) isn't anything like two people with accounts on the same social media site where their posts and audiences (who would also need accounts on that same platform) interact. At best, it's like two people living in the same city and having different friend groups.
A year or so ago I made this stupid photoshop because when someone I know starts blogging and gives Bear a try, I'm stoked that they are blogging - not because they're on this specific platform1. The only benefit I get from them using Bear is that most of the time they're up and writing faster, and if they have any problems I might be able to help since I've been using it for a while (Which, fuck me, is a bonkers thing to say; I'm coming up on the second year anniversary!!).
Dude I don't know, man. I guess what I'm saying is that when I'm reading a blog I found on Bubbles, where and how its hosted has no Bearing (I'M SO SORRY, I HAD TO) on the content. I also think it'd be healthier for people if they didn't chase popularity, or if they didn't primarily write for other people, or (and maybe this is the kicker) if they wrote a post that no one read, they'd still celebrate the act of having written something.
Anyway, thanks for reading and / or sorry. Here's your end-of-post cat; his name is Sloth but you need to know that sometimes we call him "Slothy Bottoms" and you can too.
As an edit after publishing, I get that I didn't make this super clear but I thoroughly love Bearblog as a blogging platform. It makes my life easier! I like the post editor, the subscription bonuses, the ease of overall modification - Herman's built a super rad thing here. I just don't think it makes everyone who uses it connected. Would we view that same connection for everyone on the same domain registrar? Email provider? Belaboring the point but you get me.↩
2026-08-03 04:19:00
This past week, LC and I have made a conscious effort to spend even more time outside. To keep our vibrations up. To get some sunshine on our faces, breathe fresh air, and be near some sort of body of water whenever we were able to. Not speaking for LC, but I'm basically a plant (sun + water are essentials to my happiness). I've learned that nature has a way of grounding me when everything else feels heavy. I'm letting it do its part in helping me heal this time around, albeit very slowly.
I'm also trying to continue to document the little, everyday moments. Not everything needs to be a big adventure to be worth remembering. Sometimes it's just a quiet walk, a trail we've done a few times, or the sunset gradient during a car ride home.
So this post is a small collection of a few recent hikes and walks1 we've taken these past few days, and a couple of photos from each. It also kind of serves as a reminder to myself to keep going outside, keep noticing the small things, and keep recording them, even if my photo blog is taking a mini hiatus for now.
This one was a quick and easy loop. It's quieter during the week, and absolutely packed on the weekends. There's barely any shade so super important to stay hydrated during the warmer days. We've renamed it to Cocoa's Loop.
An out and back trail, around ~7.1 miles. There were A TON of stairs, and a lot of climbing. A lot of the streams are dried out for the season, but there were still a few quiet streams here and there. Pretty shaded for the most part.
This was just a random trail we found on AllTrails since we wanted to go for a walk after dinner. Nothing special. There were a lot of cats on the trail for some reason. Saw quite a few fruit trees, and huge blackberry bushes.
If you know of a trail in the Bay Area, California that you particularly enjoy that I should check out, I'd love to hear about it.
Related: Thankful for All That Holds Me Together
Taken from my Strava + AllTrails logs↩
2026-08-02 14:45:26
I feel insane for writing a blog post about this, but I've been absolutely wired for twelve hours and finally have the ability to sit down and recap what the fuck happened today, even if it's just for me.
Important facts first:
It's been a very hard day. Hurriedly sifting through our belongings and trying to prioritize what we can and cannot handle leaving behind was emotionally devastating. It's difficult to watch the news and see folks flee their burning homes and know that if the winds change just right, we'll be doing the same.
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2026-08-02 07:47:00
I have not participated in a blogging challenge before, but I'll give Blaugust a try this year. (Oh god, what am I getting myself into. I regret it already.)
—
In AuguStory, the story of your blog, Robert asks:
—
I started blogging in middle school, when LiveJournal was still invite-only. The prettiest girl in class was on it and invited me to join. I felt very cool. I didn't care for writing, but I loved customizing my journal's design.
Once I started high school, personal domains were the cool new thing. The people who had them were generous & offered to host other people's websites too. If we saw a domain name we liked, we could ask to be a hostee, and if we fit their vibe, the hosts would create a subdirectory for us to FTP into and upload our HTML files. For years, my personal website was hosted by an older teenage girl, and I kept it until she decided not to renew her domain.
From there, I moved to WordPress. At the start of art school, I created an art blog, mostly to share what I created for classes. I deleted it after a year or so because I couldn't deal with the visibility. After college, I created a private blog that I wrote in intermittently for more than a decade — it was a diary for unrestrained braindumping. Over time, I tried out different tools & platforms out of curiousity, but none of them stuck, and many aren't around anymore.
Then I started this Bearblog. I was dismayed with the state of the internet and stumbled upon a few indieweb manifestos. I wanted to be a part of creating the kind of internet I wanted to see: earnest, creative, whimsical, generous, welcoming, curious, human. (Also, I had some words I needed to get out of me.)
But I was disappointed: the more I browsed the indieweb, the more I saw that it was full of men writing about tech. I've stuck around though because I want to see more people like me in this space (if I were gone, there'd be one less, right?).1
And it's been worth it:
I watched folkmoss' Bearblog design come together in real-time. (Yes, I'm a creep. I was just there refreshing the page.) (I love seeing signs of a new custom blog on the discovery feed.)
Someone emailed me about one of my CSS posts — no hello or context or anything, just one-sentence questions, email after email, about things not working — and I was going to get all curmudgeon on them about their lack of email etiquette, but then I saw the blog they were building and realized they were 11. How cool is that? An 11-year-old kid learning how to customize their blog.
A few internet strangers emailed me to tell me that my website inspired them to create their own. Which astounded me. It reminded me that when we're doing something fun & others see the joy, they'll want to give things a try too.
I love that there's a growing group of tinkerers on Bearblog — people playing with CSS and pixel art and web design for the first time (or picking it back up again after a long time). I think Bearblog is the perfect platform for learning CSS, much like LiveJournal and MySpace were back in the 2000s.
And this is what has kept me going. Because the internet is fun, creating websites is fun, and I want to see more people join in on this fun.
I've also since wandered into other pockets of the indieweb and found more of what I was looking for. The indieweb is more than just blogs: You Don't Have to Blog.↩