enthusiasts and nerds and hobbyists | Rebecca Toh

The most beautiful thing about a blog is that most of us don’t write blogs to become famous or make money. We write blogs simply because we are enthusiasts and nerds and hobbyists, and our little home in this vague corner of the internet is where we go to be, in a sense, fully ourselves, a safe place where we can go full nerd with a community of fellow nerds in tow.

I wholeheartedly agree!

People living halfway across the world from us, in Belgium and Iceland and the very far ends of Vladivostock, were making things they wanted to make just for the heck of it — websites and blogs were born out of hobbies, not ambitions. We were all amateurs making crude, ugly but heartfelt internet objects out of our laughable HTML skills. It was FUN because we were all amateurs together and there were no rules and no expectations and, of course, very little aesthetic sense. It was a pretty level playing ground.

Interesting enough, I feel that I am at this stage with this online journal. Except I'm not living in the past, but in the present.

I know we can never time travel back to the days before we lost our internet innocence, but we can remind ourselves that we always have the permission to be hobbyists and amateurs, whether on the internet or not, and that we never need to feel guilty spending ungodly amounts of time playing and tinkering and being immersed in whatever we’re interested in. In fact I cannot think of a better way to live, to be always curious and having fun.

Funny, me and CJ were just talking about how much fun it is to tinker with blogs. It turns out you don't need to travel back in time. You just need to provide people a simple, stable platform to write on. Then you set them loose and see what they come up with.

Maybe the problem today is that blogging has been made too convenient for the general population. All it takes is a few clicks and you've got it working. Everything's too easy. There's no friction. Hence, there's also significantly less joy in tinkering.

So I say, hobby above ambition (and monetization/productivity/optimization). Always.

Aye! Hobby above ambition.

Link: enthusiasts and nerds and hobbyists

Tags: #Bookmarks #Blogging #Writing #Reflection

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