Outlasting Everyone

Blogging Outside Format. A manifesto, post #7/14

Chase away anyone trying to sell you on trends. Trends are noise. You're building a blog for decades. Not months. Not quarters. Decades.

Trends exist for digital agencies that need to show clients a monthly report and justify their retainer. Trends exist for quick hype cycles. Your trend is organic growth, a spark in your eyes, and fire in your gut.

Don't compare yourself to the big ones

Don't measure yourself against someone who's been blogging for twenty-five years. You put your channel next to a major blogger and your hands drop: they have SO MUCH, and you have nothing. But they've been at this since the late nineties. In that time they ran hundreds of experiments — formats, series, total flops. Whatever worked, they kept. Whatever didn't, they threw out. A lot didn't work.

None of that is possible if you're waiting for instant results right now. It's only possible if you're ready to enjoy the process and move steadily.

Outlast everyone

Most people who start a blog today will quit within a year. Because it doesn't pay off immediately. And most of what you can read online right now is soulless, twice-digested garbage. A copy of a copy of a copy in pop-science and political commentary channels.

Against that backdrop, real author-driven blogs — where people actually have original thoughts worth something — are worth their weight in gold. There aren't many. And every year, as AI slop piles up, there'll be even fewer.

There's nothing wrong with running a content aggregation channel — it's just business. But the rare thing, the genuinely great thing, is staying human and sharing what actually matters to you.

The strategy is simple: stay alive and outlast everyone.

The blog that creates the author

Montaigne wrote his Essays for thirty years. From 1580 until his death. The prototype of a blog — in the sixteenth century. He said: "I have no more made my book than my book has made me." A blog isn't just a broadcast channel. It's a tool for self-knowledge. You write and you discover what you think. Not the other way around.

In 1999, there were twenty-three blogs on the internet. Twenty-three. People wrote for themselves and a handful of people they knew. Self-reflection for a community of twenty.

Zines, early blogs, IndieWeb — it's one unbroken line stretching back four hundred and fifty years. Every generation rediscovers DIY publishing. Every time the industry turns writing into a content conveyor belt, people show up and do it their own way.

For me — an immigrant writing in three languages — the blog became a way to reassemble my identity. Research shows that autobiographical writing helps migrants "rewrite themselves" in a new context. Three languages isn't three translations. It's three parallel versions of yourself, each tuned to a different culture.

Five principles

Run your blog in a way you can sustain for 10, 20, 30 years. That means:

No strain, no overinvestment. Don't spend more on production than you're comfortable with.

No chasing a quick score. Don't wait for THE ONE POST that makes you famous forever. This is a long, gradual process.

Do it because it genuinely feels good, not because you're grinding through a content calendar. You want to come back to your blog with energy, not dread.

Stop obsessing over numbers. Most of the time they won't look impressive next to the big players.

Alive. Real. Honest.

Outside the format

School convinced me I was an idiot. Every essay: "satisfactory." Never "good," never "excellent." I watched the blogging boom and wanted in, but thought: who needs me there? Though I could see actual idiots doing it, and I knew I wasn't worse. But I did nothing, because I was thinking in the formats they handed me.

Now I'm outside the format. And it's the best feeling.

If you have a thought that doesn't fit the format — just start a blog. Let it be a fart in a puddle. Let it be complete nonsense. But if you want to say it — say it. Rome wasn't built in a day. Writing is a skill. And skills take time, not talent.

When someone asked me "Where do you see yourself in ten years?" — I lit up. I imagined what I'd be writing ten years from now. What I'd be thinking. Who I'd become. That's both a joy and — my friends tell me, not me — a kind of heroism.

A blog is a long game. Five, ten, twenty, thirty years. No strain, no chasing numbers, no masks. Alive, real, outside the format. And the only fuel is joy.