Starting Point
So that's what I'm going to do. I wrote my first post today and I thought I'd share it here too.
I hope you'll join me on Substack for future posts...
So what is my Substack about? I’m not 100% sure yet. So, why am I here? Because I’m interested and intrigued.
I initially thought that this would be a new place to continue my existing blog, Cherry Heart. I currently have a creaky old Blogger blog and although I loved it back in the blogging hey-day, things have changed a lot since then. I started a YouTube podcast and ended up saying a lot there instead. Social media took off and the audience fragmented. Leaving Blogger comments became harder, the community grew quieter. There was less to say and fewer people to say it to. My post writing voice and habits dwindled away.
But lately I’ve been feeling the urge to revive it. There is something about getting thoughts down on a page. Forcing them from their nebulous state floating around my head to coalesce into a defined structure of words and sentences on a screen is a process that I find incredibly useful. Well, that’s hardly a breakthrough realisation, but I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it, or felt satisfied by it and need it maybe?
I’ve also been thinking about moving my website to a different platform on and off for a long time now. But it always seems like such a gargantum task, especially for someone who doesn’t really have much knowledge of how the buts and bolts of websites work. Then I stumbled across Substack. Ah ha, I thought to myself, could this be an answer? Maybe I don’t move the whole website, but just the ‘blogging’ bit? A more modern place where connection might be easier again and a few mod-cons, like - actually telling people I’ve posted - would be possible. That seemed interesting.
While I mulled over the possibilities of Substack, I opened my blog and I wrote. Going back onto Blogger felt a little like going up into the attic. It’s old and dusty, it’s a bit rickety and precarious, I wasn’t really expecting to see anyone up there.
At first that made me a little sad. I could resume writing, but would anyone resume reading? Would anyone still be there? Would there be a point? Then something happened. Instead of feeling like it would be pointless to write if no-one was there to read any more, maybe that would be the reason to write now? Sounds strange I suppose. Is shouting into the void usually a motivator? But you see, I had been writing on the blog for a long time and I only wrote about certain things. I used to write about things that I talked about elsewhere now. So what was I writing for now? Well… because I wanted. And if potentially no-one was reading it, I was writing just for me. So… I could please myself? Bingo!
Maybe this was the chance to do something new. Something genuinely different. Something I think I’ve been craving for a while.
Which brings us here. I came here hoping to revive something I had lost, to pick up where I left off, but maybe I don’t want that. Maybe now I want to follow up on that chance and make a fresh start.
I also wanted to revive that connection to others. It’s part of what made it fun. I met some great people back then. So maybe this is a place where I can do that too.
I guess I’ll find out.