Starting a Blog in 2024: Why I am and maybe why you should too.

Faster cars, faster charging, faster and more entertainment, quick shipping, quick information at the tips of our fingers! 2024 is quicker than any previous year. Some of it is really nice! I definitely would never get rid of my next day shipping from amazon, or same day drops for video games and music. I do wish that some aspects of life would just slow down a little though. 

I’ve been off of Tiktok for some time now, and I have to say, I really don’t miss it as much as I thought I would. It was so fast paced and I would more often than not, find myself burning an entire evening doing nothing but doom scroll funny 30 second videos. My brain has essentially mushed into nothing at all while perusing other people’s ideas. That really didn’t settle well with me. It’s not like I’m slated to do anything amazing, or world changing, but I want my own ideas to flow forth. 

How it Started

The first time I realized I had wanted my own ideas out there as well was a weird struggle. I wasn’t sure how I felt about my face being on the internet. I wasn’t confident in my ideas and myself. I did, however, feel like creating my own content was the honest solution to the empty I was feeling. 

I first started by trying to make my own content on social media sites. Made my own Youtube videos. I tried making interesting Tiktoks. It all came back to the same point of feeling like a weirdly stressful venture of wanting views, being disappointed by a lack of views, and immobilized by depression to do more. It was a terrible cycle, one that I did not enjoy. I do enjoy making video content, but primarily the long form stuff. So I quit the fast life of Tiktok and focused on youtube and Twitch for a while. Twitch streaming was one of my all time favorite endeavors. It filled me with joy. It let me be myself and connect with people at a level I hadn’t been able to in the other form factors. Unfortunately, some weirdness happened in my personal life and I had to step back from it. 

Back to the grind, back to being unable to do the high quality videos I wanted. They require so much time and usually support. I just didn’t have it. So I just stopped…I stepped back from all of my social media, stepped back from Youtube, stepped back from everything. I went and deleted them all off my phone, and now here we are nearly a year later.   

I’ve tried going back. Tried picking up Tiktok again. But frankly, it just lost its appeal. I got use to the absence of the constant flow. I was now out of the loop with tech stuff, and out of the loop with trends. Somehow, it ended up being so much more refreshing than I had thought. I started reading again, started learning how to draw ( I’m still so bad). I started looking through all the music I could find on Apple Music instead of just following the catchy Tiktok song that was stuck in my head. Before I knew it I felt like I had found myself again. For the first time in years, I wanted to go out and explore! I learned how to ride a motorcycle and got my license. The world was once again my oyster, and I was set and ready to crack it. 

How it’s going

Something was missing though. I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, but I knew there was something I needed to do and just hadn’t been doing. I hadn’t been creating. Taking ideas, and thoughts and putting it out into the world. I remembered that I love connecting with people, and I really love helping or sharing my thoughts. I mean, who doesn’t!? So I started making videos again. But not for the public, just for my wife and I. Our adventures, our trips, even just the small day to day. I can't quite tell you how much joy that brought me! It felt so special and sincere, because it was something I was just making for the two of us. Then it hit me, and I started to see a shift in the online world, all at the same time. We have all been living too fast for too long. We have been choking down entertainment so fast that we couldn’t feel the pain that life was anymore. Like when you get something really spicy, and it’s beyond your threshold, you barely chew it, you just get it down as quickly as possible. That is what we as humans have been doing for years now, and it finally caught up to us. 

People now crave more than ever, relatability and good vibes. They want something that is a little slower paced and that speaks to their soul. I guarantee over the next few years we will see a more and more prominent style to this type of entertainment. A shift back towards thought, and heart. Not cramming down all you can eat buffets of entertainment. 

That brings me to this article

I know I’ve probably been a little preachy and a little long winded, and maybe even a little confusing. For that I’m sorry, I am still cleaning out the last few years of brain sludge as I learn to write again. I want to believe that getting our full written thoughts, not tin tidbits and snippets, but well thought out internal thinking, is what we need now more than ever. I would love to go back to the age of written blogs and early blogging content where we just exist. I would love to see a resurgence in well written articles that grab attention and hearts, not from mainstream sources, but from niche side pieces of the internet. Hopefully I can do that while still making a buck or two. Shameless plug to my other articles that make me money When you buy stuff.  

In the end, I know that this article is going out into the ether of the internet, and the chances of anyone taking note of it or actually giving it the time of day are next to zero. Yet I can’t help but try. So if you’ve read this, and you enjoyed my ramblings, please let me know. Write a comment, or even subscribe to our newsletter, and I’ll try to not inundate you with emails. ;) 

Happy days are coming you Nifty weirdos. 

-Zach

#blogging #thoughts #nottechnicallytech