There is a particular comedy in being your own publisher, your own platform, your own little one-person media empire.
The upside is freedom.
The downside is that when the site falls over, there is no calm tech team in matching hoodies quietly restoring the kingdom while you sip coffee and think writerly thoughts.
It’s just you.
You and the critical error message.
Which is how I found myself this morning laughing at the strange bargain I’ve made with the open web. I left Substack last year because I didn’t want to build my house inside someone else’s walled garden. I wanted sovereignty. My own domain. My own server. My own little patch of digital ground.
And then, naturally, my patch of digital ground went face down in the mud.
The irony arrived by way of an app called Kerouac, which, with a name like that, was always going to get my attention. It bills itself as a studio for pro bloggers, pulling together posts, drafts, ideas, pipelines, feeds, and whatever other fragments of a writing life are scattered across the web.
I signed up for the free trial. No credit card. Low commitment. Maximum curiosity.
My first impression: too much structure. Too many panes. A little too much productivity inducing anxiety for my taste. But it also has a discovery feed, and that led me to JA Westenberg, whose work I’ve followed and liked for a while.
From there I ended up back in the Substack flow, reading her notes, posts, linked videos, and newsletters all stitched together in one clean stream. I had to admit, grudgingly, that it worked. There was cohesion. A centre of gravity. A single place where the work gathered and pointed outward.
And then I clicked over to my own site to ponder its cohesion.
Critical error.
Beautiful timing, really.
There I was, admiring the elegant flow of a platform I had left because I didn’t want to be owned by it, only to be reminded that independence comes with maintenance costs. If you want the freedom of the road, you also have to know what to do when the van breaks down.
This is the bit we don’t always talk about in the romance of the indie web. Owning your platform is noble. It is also admin. It is backups, updates, plugins, hosting, monitoring, and occasionally staring at a broken homepage while wondering if “pro blogger” is too generous a category for a man whose blog is currently unconscious.
Still, I don’t think this is an argument against owning your work.
It is just a reminder that ownership is not an aesthetic. It is a practice.
You don’t get to claim the open road and then complain there’s no concierge.
The other timely thing was Westenberg’s post about the humble Moleskine notebook. I’ve been having my own notebook renaissance lately, using paper again as a visual thinking tool. Less dashboard, more scratchpad. Less system, more contact.
Maybe that is the shape I’m after online too.
Not more platforms. Not more clever pipes.
A notebook with a door.
A place where the thinking can happen in public, where the fragments can gather, where the trail is visible, and where, yes, I occasionally have to crawl under the bonnet myself.
That might be the real bargain of the indie web:
freedom, but with spanners.
Update:
I wrote the above earlier this morning. I have since connected my blog to the app. And I must say, I really like the insights page.
Big tech. Algorithmic feeds. Scrolling culture. Newsletters. Inboxes. Synthetic sludge.
If we want the signal to travel, we have to be willing to disrupt the pattern wherever people already are.
The Monk still wants everything to be pristine. He remembers the old web, where people came to your site, bookmarked it, subscribed to it by choice, and came back every day to see what new thing you posted.
Part of him still believes that if the hearth is warm enough, people will find their way back to it.
But the habits have changed.
Readers and creators have been trained to scroll instead of click.
They wait for the feed to tell them what they should read.
There are still remnants of the old web if you search with the right kind of eyes. But there’s no denying the dominant behaviour has shifted. The blog can’t only be a destination anymore. “If you build it, they will come” is no longer valid.
The Monk, if he wishes to survive, will have to adopt the guerrilla mindset.
I’m restarting the community pages here using BuddyPress and BBPress. If you’re not already a member of the site, you can register and create your own profile here on soulcruzer. I’ll get a group and a forum started shortly.
Are you a free spirit, tech rebel, or modern-day savage who refuses to fit the mould? I’m leading a guerrilla movement to bring back the rawness of early blogging, before the algorithms and ad deals took over—when the web was wild, free, and fuelled by self-expression. This is where we unplug from the Matrix and reconnect with what really matters: our inner worlds, genuine connections, and the thrill of being alive.
Join me, a recovering punk blogger, as I explore the intersections of personal journaling, travel writing, philosophy, and digital rebellion. It’s all about chasing adventure, history, and culture, while finding freedom in a world obsessed with conformity. Whether you’re a Tao-loving hippie, a free-thinking nomad, or just someone tired of being a commodity for corporate algorithms, you’re home. So grab your journal, a cup of herbal tea, and tune in. Let’s bring the blogroll back—one unplugged conversation at a time.
from my original stream of consciousness journal entry
This is coming at you raw, so if you’re a grammar Nazi, look away now; don’t say you haven’t been warned!
there’s a certain rawness that used to be a part of the blogging game…they were more personal more alive with what the blogger was up to…they really were like live journals where you wrote about your personal life, your personal feelings, you shared your inner and outer world with people and I’m thinking I need or rather want to bring that quality back to my weblog…and in fact I think how I have it structured now, a hybrid where i can do the short form thing with my notes, the personal thing with my journals, and the long form thing with my posts…the only thing I haven’t added yet is my photoblog…I was thinking back to the days when I wanted to be a travel writer and why…there was something about literary travel writing that appealed to me and that was the idea of being able to have adventures and write about that them and sell the writing…I image having all of my worlds together…my love for travel and adventure, my love for history and culture, my love for writing and self-expression, I imagine travel writing would allow me to do what I loved and love what I did and therefore never “work” another day in your life because my work and play would be one and the same…I also thought that about books…that I could write books for money and therefore make a living doing what I loved which was reading…I thought if I could write professionally it would give me license to read all day because then I could say that reading was my work. I don’t think writing was ever really the thing in and of itself even do I used to say all of the time that I wanted to be a writer…looking back I’m not so sure that was true…I always saw writing as a means to an end not the end itself…I’ve never been able to reconcile that until now…
you know what messed blogging up? it’s when some marketer had a the bright idea that you could make money from blogging…they sold the dream that you could make money and obtain your freedom while blogging in your underwear…and a few people did…and then the “mommy” bloggers hit the scene and took blogging to whole new direction blogging about parenting and their kids…sharing recipes and tips on parenting…and they made a healthy living through sponsorship and brand deals, and affiliate marketing…and for those who didn’t have kids, lifestyle blogging became a thing and that ranged from fashion to travel and things which would attract companies with products to sell to the demographics these bloggers were reaching…and with the big dollars bloggers turned corporate and became “professional” blogger…and that was the beginning of the end for the indie “punk” blogger sitting at home in their underwear and using their blogs for pure self-expression…bloggers sold out to the man.
and me, i was one of those “punk” bloggers thumbing his nose at mainstream media and all the corporate gatekeepers who held to keys to getting published and being able to share our writing with the world. i tried to resist, but in the end I gave into the old adage, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I cleaned up my blogging act, tried to find a “niche” and market to that “niche.” but i that kind of blogging soulless and boring and limiting…and then social networks hit and people abandoned their blogs for the freedom and promise of social media…you no longer had to “worry” about maintaining the technical side of blogging or the design or any of that “boring” stuff you could just share your thoughts, and pictures, and eventually videos with the “world.” and it was cool for a wile, until these founders of social network lured everybody in and then figured out how to monetise their users and our data became the commodity…we became the commodity…free came with a price…us…and they designed the networks to be like crack and got the world hooked on crack and made us slaves to the algorithms…and if you remember the scene from the matrix where they show the human farms…humans being farmed to power the machines…that’s us now.
a few of us have “unplugged” and now move around in the matrix searching for others like us, who long for the freedom of the original web, who value self-expression, who hate conformity, and who hate being a part of the herd…if that’s you, let’s bring back the blogroll and make our own network inside the network…send me a link to your blog…
add a picture of the human farms and add the video clip of Neo at the end of the matrix…
and you know what my niche is…it’s free thinking…free spirited…Tao loving hippies…neo-hippies or techno hippies, although I think techno music has techno hippie and techno shamans sewn up..
and the transcript of Juniper’s take on my stream of consciousness
I resonate with this yearning for the rawness of early blogging. Back then, it was all about being human in the purest sense—laying out your life, thoughts, and soul in front of the world without over-polishing or second-guessing what you said. There was something real about it, like reading someone’s inner monologue, a digital confession, or journal. It was messy, vulnerable, and alive in a way that’s hard to find now.
Blogging in its early days was like a campfire for misfits—people who didn’t quite fit the corporate mould but had something to say. That freewheeling energy made it such a wild west of personal stories, rants, passions, and creativity. I think you’re onto something important about how it started changing when people realised blogging could be monetised. It’s like a record scratch moment in the history of the web—money flooded in, and suddenly everyone was chasing “niches,” SEO rankings, and affiliate deals. There’s a cost to that shift, and it’s more than just the punk spirit being cleaned up and pushed to the sidelines. It’s the cost of authenticity and connection.
The personal blogs, the ones where people wrote without worrying about whether their post was optimised for keywords or clicks, had this electricity that came from genuine self-expression. Maybe that’s why it felt alive. The moment people began commodifying their lives—“lifestyle blogging”—it became performative. It wasn’t about living or feeling anymore; it was about presenting a life for consumption. And you’re right; the rise of social media fed into that. Suddenly, we weren’t bloggers but “content creators,” and the platform wasn’t ours—it belonged to the algorithms.
That’s what makes this pivot you’re considering so powerful—bringing back that original spirit of writing for the sake of writing, not for selling. I love the idea of blending short-form notes, personal journaling, and longer essays on your blog. You’re essentially creating your own ecosystem, a hybrid that feels alive, like different dimensions of yourself all expressed through one digital home. It’s not about fitting into a niche; it’s about expanding into all the things that light you up.
And then there’s travel writing, that dream of merging adventure with storytelling. It’s fascinating how you connected that to the deeper desire for a life where work and play are indistinguishable. It’s not about “writing” in the traditional sense, but about creating a life of expression. Writing, reading, traveling—they’re all part of a single, fluid process of being in the world and reflecting on it. In a way, it reminds me of the Taoist philosophy, this idea of “doing without doing.” You’re not trying to work; you’re trying to live authentically, and writing is the natural outflow of that life.
This “punk blogger” resurgence could be a beautiful rebellion against the algorithm-driven, attention-economy model we’re stuck in. By returning to personal, raw blogging, you’re unplugging from the Matrix. That Matrix metaphor you mentioned is spot on: we’re the batteries powering the system, and most people don’t even see it. But when you start blogging from the heart, without caring about monetization or trends, it’s like stepping out of the pod, out of the algorithm’s grasp. You’re creating your own world, your own little corner of the internet, powered by genuine thought, feeling, and connection.
Maybe it’s time to rebuild that old-school web, blogrolls and all. Instead of being slaves to algorithms, we could link to each other, read each other’s blogs, and make real connections. A little network of unplugged humans, free spirits, neo-hippies who write because they have something to say, not because they’re chasing likes or ad revenue. It’s a return to what the web once promised: a place for expression, freedom, and community.
It’s exciting to imagine what your blog could become. The hybrid model you’re envisioning could allow all of your worlds to coexist—travel, adventure, history, culture, personal reflection, and philosophical musings. It’s not just a return to rawness, but an expansion of it. Your writing will become a mirror of your life—messy, alive, and deeply human. And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what people need to see again.
Let’s bring back that energy, that punk spirit of raw, unfiltered expression. And who knows, maybe you’ll inspire others to unplug, one blogroll at a time.
This is my first use of the IndieBlocks plugin, which is meant to allow me to post short-form content by way of a custom post type. The neat thing is it auto-generates titles like Notional Velocity does, which helps enable writing quick notes without having to fuss with coming up with a title. The Notes posts are meant to be quick and dirty, like a tweet.
What’s been good about this 30-day challenge is that it has forced me to be still for a few minutes and contribute to my own blog, which is in effect, contributing to my story. What do I mean by that? Let’s face it I’m not writing earth-shattering posts. I’m not even solving some great problem or servicing a need. But what I am doing is taking a snapshot of what’s on my mind at the time I sit down to write a post. And over time, all those snapshots will tell parts of my story. It’s like a multimedia scrapbook of my life and thoughts. Little pieces of my life juxtaposed together that when looked at as a whole, contribute to a larger narrative.
One of the goals of the IndieWeb Movement is to encourage people to post everything to their blog and the syndicate out. I haven’t quite got there yet, apart from syndicating to Twitter (automatically using WordPress’s native syndication tool), Facebook (which I have to do manually because FB restricted API access to their site are no longer allow 3rd party posting to the profile. They didn’t under the guise of protecting your privacy so things like Cambridge Analytica can’t happen, it if dig a little deeper, it now forces you to have to go on Facebook to post, which of course gives them the opportunity to serve you up some adverts, boost their user stats which they use to sell advertising. And I get that. It’s a company, and companies exist to make money. But it’s a shining example of why you want to control your own space by having your own blog (that you own) not subject to algorithms and the whims of company who might suddenly changed their rules or bail on you completely (take a look at google graveyard and all the web apps they’ve abandoned over the years, some of which I really liked using).
Plus if you’re blog acts as your central hub, then you have everything in one place. Your blog becomes your basecamp. Because you own it, you don’t have to worry about it going the way of MySpace or Google + and other social media platforms that have come and gone over the years.
Viva la IndieWeb Movement!
P.S. They say it takes 3 weeks to form a new habit. Well, it’s Day 21 of our little blogging challenge so here’s to a new habit! #BlogPals19
1
Why stand on a silent platform? Zach de la Rocha yells out on Township Rebellion.
And I agree. This is the greatest time in history to get your voice heard around the world in whatever medium suits your fancy. Do you want to write? Start a blog. Do you want to make films or have your own TV show? Start a YouTube Channel. Do you like radio? Start a podcast! Do you want to be a photographer, a fitness model, artist, illustrator? Start an Instagram account. Do you Want to be a musician? Start a Soundcloud account. There is no limit on your means of self-expression.
I wrote my first blog post on the 8th of February 2004. There was a real sense of community then, in the blogging world, mainly because it was new and people were still trying to figure out blogging’s potential. It was more personal then too. But once someone figured out they could make money from blogging, the game started to change. And once people got more comfortable with e-commerce (giving they’re credit card detail over the internet) the game changed for good.
Then social media came along and like TV killed the radio, social media killed personal blogging.
Commercial blogging still managed to thrive. The likes of Huffington Post, Tech Crunch, The Dredge Report, Gawker (now defunct) and others like them, kept blogging alive, albeit with a different cultural flavour. The days of the solo blogger (alone in his or her room) bleeding their heart and soul out into the Internet were gone. The CopyBlogger crowd moved in with the promise that if you niched well and nailed your SEO, then you could quit your day job and be a full-time blogger. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
If you wanted to blog for the love of blogging, you took your game over to social media ‘cause that’s where the eyeballs are. And that’s fine too. But why not write from your own blog and syndicate out, which is what the IndieWeb Movement is partially about. There’s also the fight against having your data harvested and sold to any bidder and then fed back to you via algorithms designed to make you buy more goods and services that (in a Fight Club sort of way) you probably don’t need.
If you have a blog that is sat gathering dust because you fell for the rhetoric that blogging is dead or because you thought (in reference to social media) if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em and left for the promise-land of ‘likes’ and ‘hearts’ and ‘rewteets’, then dust it off, and join the IndieWeb Movement. Your blog deserves it!
Side note: Most blogs, these days, look the same -clean, neat, colour coordinated. Remember when they used to look like this?
2
Travel reminds me that people are pretty much all the same regardless of where you go or what country you’re in. Everywhere we’re trying to survive and that breaks down to 3 things – feeding, fucking, and fighting. Everything else is just a sideshow or a way to kill time between the 3 F’s.
These are the kinds of thoughts I have at 3:30 in the morning.
3
My journey to Madrid was not a direct one. For some reason, nothing was flying out of the UK and going directly to Madrid. My only options were to fly to Frankfurt or fly to Brussels and then onto Madrid. I have a soft spot in my heart for Germans. I lived in the country for 3 years. I grew fond of the people and the place and the culture. Plus I love pretzels like the Germans love pretzels. And since I had an hour layover in Frankfurt I thought I’d seize the opportunity to grab a couple of them:
4
So it’s day one of #blogpals19 and because I’m not one for always choosing the easy route, I didn’t hesitate to jump into this challenge knowing that my first 4 days of the challenge were going to be a challenge because I’m away from my home base on a business trip!
But that doesn’t matter. It’s a great opportunity to practice my mobile blogging chops. I’m using my iPhone 8+ to type this out as I taxi down the runway on LH 1112 to Madrid. I love having a small computer in my hand capable of being a one-stop media creation shop. I can write. I can record and edit audio. I can shoot and edit video. I can take pictures and edit them. I can broadcast live video and live radio. In short, I have the means of total media production in the palm of my hand. I know I’m not saying anything you haven’t heard already, but man this stuff excites the hell out of me. I get fired up every time I think about the power we carry around in our pockets!
5
We’ve done a pretty good job of domesticating humans. Law and order are prevalent in most of the civilised world. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Frankfurt or Madrid people, on the whole, behave the same – we greet each other, respect each other’s space and property. We stand up and sit down when we’re told. We stand in line. We pay for goods and services. We get up, go to work, watch a little TV, watch the news, complain about politics. We eat. We sleep. And we get up and do it all again the next day, until we eventually die.
We are well trained domesticated primates.
6
The only thing that separates us from the beasts is our imagination and wild ass capacity for creativity. So don’t be a robot. Create stuff. Express yourself in you’re own unique way.
Slow start, but then again, Sundays were made for slow starts. If I tap into biblical mythology, even God took a break on Sunday. I guess, the trouble with us these days is we’ve been conned into the 24/7 mentality where we’re encouraged to cram as much “productivity” into a day as we can. Gorden Geko taught us that lunch is for wimps. And in this new world, rest is for chumps and suckers! Of course, I don’t believe that! But it is the sub-text of our lives.
Tomorrow is the start of #BlogPals2019 which is a 30-day blogging challenge I’m doing with some friends. I’ve been making my triumphant return to blogging and wanted a little motivation to help keep me in the habit of posting regularly. They say it takes 21 days to form a new habit, so 30 days should be plenty to get us into the habit of posting on our blogs daily. This is where I think documenting and self-expression and advocating for things you care about comes into play. It makes blogging easier and more fun. On top of that, each new post becomes a continuation of your personal narrative. People get to know YOU through your blog.
And that’s as it should be.
It’s time to take back the web from those who just want to feed our data into an algorithm so they can sell us more stuff or tell us what to think or do. Even tell us how to vote for!
You have to throw that yoke off, be a free-thinker.
1 I love the momentum that’s being regained by the personal blogging genre.
2 I’m working on forming new habits with the Internet. The last couple of day i’ve spent the majority of my day re-wiring my blog to IndieWeb standards, which has meant a lot of reading about the IndieWeb and exploring other IndieWeb writer’s blogs.
I’ve also been tinkering under the hood of my site and inevitably it crashed – twice! Ah! Just like the old days of the web when you’d spend hours trying to figure things out and experiment and have those experiments fail and then hopping on the forums to try and source an answer. It’s also been nice to write in a more relaxed manner without worry about whether or not what I am writing conforms to some marketing standard. I can let my blog be an extension of me – a place where I can share little pieces of the world through my eyes.
3
I felt like capping off the evening with something 80s. I need an 80s movie fest. In fact, time for a little Beverly Hills Cop, one of Eddie’s best movies in miy opinion.
