Blogging like it's 2003 again

Readers of my blog have seen many different incarnations of this site over the years. Somewhere along the line, I started listening to all the “experts”, the ones who said I needed to have a specific niche, a Twitter to accompany my blog, then an Instagram, a Facebook page, and eventually even TikTok.

Somewhere in all that noise, I bought into it all and lost track of what blogging meant to me. It stopped bringing joy to my soul.

And when I’m not in a good place mentally for whatever reason, I’m simply not a creative person anymore. Over a couple of stressful, tumultuous years, my blog slowly fell by the wayside.. quietly drifting off the radar of the World Wide Web.

One night this past March, I found myself going through the old archives, scrolling backward through years of posts, trying to remember what used to make me tick back when life felt lighter. And then it hit me, the simplicity of blogging was what I’d lost. I made the decision right then and there to get back to basics with my blogging. I even wrote a blog post about it that very night entitled: Throwback to an Old Fashioned Weblog.

Back in the day, there was no chasing algorithms, no obsessing over clicks, no checking analytics every few hours. I blogged for me, for the feeling it gave me. The side benefit was that the things that excited me or mattered to me resonated with others. Through that honesty, I made genuine connections and even friendships that have lasted a decade or more.

That realization led to an experiment: what would happen if I went back to the old-school way of blogging? A real weblog, set in reverse chronological order of thoughts and ramblings, whatever was rolling around in my head at the time, out there for whoever might stumble across it. Nothing fancy. No algorithm chasing. No posting schedule designed to maximize reach. Just an honest-to-goodness weblog.

It’s been a rough couple of years, and I’ve lost most of the hobbies that used to bring me joy. Writing is one of the few that still does.

But trimming this blog down hasn’t been easy. Minimalizing and decluttering takes time. There are old posts that I feel funny about deleting, even though they don’t reflect who I am anymore. They’re my creations, and deleting them feels a little like erasing parts of myself.

Still, people change, even middle-aged Gen Xers. Some things that once lit me up just don’t anymore. Some things I don’t want to revisit. And that’s okay.

I’ve come to be known as The Retro Dad online, a moniker I’m pretty proud of. Most of my content still has a retro tie-in, but it’s also limiting to stay boxed into a niche. At this point in my life, I think the best thing I can do is return to the basics: blog when I want, about what I want, on my own terms.

Maybe I won’t get the traffic or likes that other bloggers chase, but I’ll connect with the right people. It’s cathartic, freeing, and it’s given me a new lease on blogging.

Buckle up and we’ll see where it goes.

Interestingly, many of my readers have noticed this latest incarnation.. the minimalized version of The Retro Dad. And no one’s complained. In fact, I’ve received more comments and messages lately than I have in a long time. That tells me I’m on the right track.