I started publishing in a lot of places I don't own.
Hashnode, Medium, Hacker News, Reddit, wherever a piece happens to land. They're good platforms. They have readers I couldn't reach alone. And they all, quietly, reserve the right to reshuffle the deck at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday: change the algorithm, retire a feature, block or filter what they don't like.
This site is mine; I make the rules. That's the freedom.
Make It Easy To Come Back
I try not to over-engineer this. The loop that works for me:
- Ship small improvements regularly. A typo fix counts. A typo fix is emotionally free.
- Link out to the work that matters, including work on other platforms. The platforms are fine. I just don't live there.
- Keep the navigation boring so the writing shines. Fancy menus have never once made a bad paragraph good.
A personal site isn't a product. It's a habit. The point isn't to win the internet; it's to have somewhere that's still yours when the internet moves on, which, historically, the internet enjoys doing.