Blogging is Back, Baby!

Portrait of Eleonora Duse by Ilya Repin

I started blogging on my old personal website back in 2016, and kept it going for a little while even after my most popular post took off and my life completely changed. I loved writing there; it was nice to have my own little place to write that could just exist on its own out there on the internet for people to discover. (Some of my most precious bookmarks are blogs and other personal websites I’ve found, and I love scrolling through their archives and reading things people have written over the years — I hope some people feel the same about mine!)

I ended up moved away from my personal blog when I started this site (the one you’re reading this on right now). For a multitude of reasons, I was moving away from using my maiden name (Susan Fowler) and using my married name (Susan Rigetti), so having a website under my new name that wasn’t attached solely to my most famous blog post was important to me. This personal move coincided with the increased popularity of Substack. For a while, I had been using MailChimp to send updates out to people who were subscribed to my mailing list, and it was incredibly annoying and expensive to use. Substack combined the ability to send updates with the ability to blog, and even allowed for monetization. So, like many writers, I moved over to Substack.

While I enjoyed using the Substack platform, it never really felt like it was my own space. It felt too professional and “writery” and as someone who edits for a living, it just felt to me like more work and less fun. I also didn’t like sending out email newsletters to people, and cringed every time I sent one out. I grew to miss building my own little weird corner of the internet where I could collect my oddball thoughts and let people find or ignore them on their own.

So, here I am, kicking off the new year with one of my new goals: bring blogging back.

I’ll keep using Substack for updates, because it’s a hell of a lot easier than using all the alternatives. But as for my thoughts, and my weird posts, my favorite books lists, and my guides, and all that kind of stuff, it’ll all be here.

Feels good to be back.